Winners of Flaming Lips Don't Look Back Competition!
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Don't Look Back Album Competition Results
The Flaming Lips performing The Soft Bulletin in London on 1st July - On Sale Now!
On the 1st July ATP Concerts are very proud to present as part of the Don't Look Back season The Flaming Lips performing their legendary Soft Bulletin album live in it's entirety at London's Alexandra Palace. When it was released in 1999, The Soft Bulletin topped more than 60 year-end Best Of lists in 1999, including Uncut, NME, and Rockdelux. Pitchfork gave it a rare 10.0 rating and later judged it as the 3rd best album of the 1990s (only beaten by My Bloody Valentine's Loveless and Radiohead's OK Computer). The NME gave it 9/10 and said "The combination of the emotional and experimental is more touching and wonderful than it's ever been on any Flaming Lips record in the past. It's some achievement."
The Flaming Lips will be supported by two other acts performing classic albums - Dinosaur Jr with Bug and Deerhoof with Milk Man. Tickets are on sale now from this link.
We have been giving people a chance to win a bundle of all three albums on CD - all people had to do was send us a list of their ideal Three Band x Don't Look Back Concert - and tell us why! Here are the winners. Clare Annetts who bought tickets on Friday has also been picked to win a set of CDs. If you want to check out the full list of contributions we've published them here. Thanks to everyone that emailed in! We'll be in touch with the winners via email soon.
Today you may also want to check out a great feature over at The Quietus where the Lips list their own favourite albums of all time.
Hiro Yamazaki:
1) Aphex Twin "Selected Ambient Works 85-92. This album came out in 1992 and I feel like Richard James using only one vocal sample on this cd shows why he was such a genius.
2) Modest Mouse "Lonesome Crowded West" Let's face it. Issac Brock and co haven't been able to match this masterpiece at all. Every song on this cd works perfectly and I hope one day, we'll get to see this being played at Don't Look Back
3) Bjork "Vespertine" This is my favorite Bjork release by far as it showed her capability to show her talent beyond just pop songs.
Iain Smith:
1) 13th Floor Elevators - The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators
2) The Sonics - Here Are The Sonics
3) The Monks - Black Monk Time
Roundhouse - Summer 2012
Celebrating the 40 year anniversary of 'Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965–1968', this Don't Look Back concert would be headlined by a reformed 13th Floor Elevators performing 'The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators' and supported by two other hugely influential psych-rock acts - The Sonics with 'Here Are The Sonics' and The Monks performing 'Black Monk Time.'
(In terms of plausibility, Rory Erickson has been playing songs from the 13th Floor Elevators catalog since 2008 so getting him back with Ronnie Leatherman, John Ike Walton et al would be a real coup for ATP. The Sonics reformed in 2008 and The Monks have been back together off-and-on since 1999)
Hannah Jones:
1) Ys - Joanna Newsom (with full orchestra)
Having seen her live backed by just a trombone, two violins, a drum kit and a banjo, I can only imagine how incredible her concert would be with all the lush orchestration of the album (although there are various youtube videos that can confirm this). Ys is ambitious and awe-inspiring and, due to the average song length, you'd be lucky to see more than one track from it played live now (not that her other LPs are any less than wonderful). I'm a little bit in love with her, can you tell?
2) Nina Simone Sings the Blues - Nina Simone
This is my obligatory legend-that-I-would-bring-back-from-the-dead choice, ideally (and I probably shouldn't admit to this) I'd have her playing one of her many best of compilations to try and get as many songs that I love as possible. However, her, on stage, with just a piano, playing this from start to finish would be truly magical.
3) In the Aeroplane Over the Sea - Neutral Milk Hotel
This is probably my favourite album, it's difficult to say exactly why because, like most people, the first time I heard it I thought it was awful. It didn't take long for me to come round to the brilliance of it, but unfortunately that was still 11 years after they'd stopped playing together. Now Jeff Mangum is starting to play live again, and no doubt his shows will be brilliant, but to hear this in all it's eccentric beauty, accordion, singing saw and all, you'd need the full band.
Mohamed el Amin Nogdalla:
1) John Coltrane - Sun Ship (w/ special guest Eric Dolphy on flute)
I've spent the past 10 yrs trying to describe why I think this a record is 'Trane's finest, and arguably one of 5 records that certainly deserve contesting for the title of "greatest Jazz record of all time". Recorded during his 3rd stage (which can easily be split by the 3 main variants of My Favorite Things) and merely 2 yrs before his passing, there is a strange restraint to the ballads playing here, an oxymoron considering how deftly Trane and co. manage to transcend space and time with their compositions, bridging the modal jazz tendencies with coltrane's later free jazz experimentation, a unique hybrid of harmony meeting clatter. It's an intensely personnel recording, one that flows naturally without the need for individual tracks, making for a great Don’t Look Back Candidate.
Inclusion of Dolphy would simply enhance an already intense and borderline spiritual music experience. Plus the idea of Dolphy and Coltrane jamming together simply waters my mouth.
2) Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Lift Yr. Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven!
GSY!BE had to be in the list. Regardless of anyone else I want to see, they are easily the band that changed everything I perceived in music, and undoubtedly will change it if I manage to see them live. I could write essays about the significance of this record, the unique storyline and structure, the separate thematic set pieces, the resounding humanity of it all, but it’s easily summed by this:
This is all the emotions possessed by a soul, interwoven into music notes.
3) Leonard Cohen - Songs of Love & Hate
If there is ever a record that is as timeless as Bob Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde, it’s this. The master of all wordsmith performing an acoustic set of this record, the soundtrack for bone-chilling, peripatetic ventures into the night, would be as ferocious as it would be tender.
Eddy Francis:
On first........Silver Jews - American Water
then............Feelies - Crazy Rhythms
and finally....Boards of Canada - Music Has the Right.........
Oh! What a night!
He senses the love of the audience
and casts his shyness away
Smith and Jones Forever!
Berman the reluctant and triumphant troubadour.
A lovestuck crowd awaits
For the next stage of the journey
Cast back to 1980
Music of unquenchable energy and happiness
The most reluctant dancer, dancing
It builds to it's orgasmic climax
Crazy Feelings.....Crazy Feelings......
By now high on Rhythm and Love
They savour the moment....
One Off. Never Again.
Tears, cheers come from deep
The audience becomes the song
Moves as one
SixtyTen...........
Dazed they go, into the dark
Walking on Air, Hearts alive.
Marc Bloomfield:
1) The Fall doing Hex Enduction Hour
Of course, The Fall doing a Don't Look Back show would never happen and anything like it is kind of the antithesis of the group. But... I was way too young to see them when they were playing this and despite some cracking recent stuff, everything seems to knit together perfectly on HEH. It reminds me of Alasdair Gray's Lanark - there's something eerily not quite right about it, like there's something horrible going on, but you're not quite sure what it is. And it features two drummers. I've never seen The Fall play with two drummers. Of course, it could be the best gig ever or a complete shambles. Either way, I think it would be worth it.
2) Faith No More doing Angel Dust
The first gig I went to was FNM at Brixton Academy, touring Angel Dust in 1992. They didn't play all of it then, but what they did do sounded great and I think it would make a fantastic show (provided they left off Easy - it was good live, but it's not part of the album, really - it needs to finish on Midnight Cowboy). Ideally, Jim Martin would take a break from growing big pumpkins and play just for this show (no matter how much he did or didn't contribute to that album, he played it live in 1992) - it would add to the experience. Perhaps wheel out Chuck Mosley for some early stuff in an encore.
3) Funkadelic doing Free Your Mind... And Your Ass Will Follow
I've only recently found this, but it's just amazing. The album, despite the bonkers stereo effects, sounds very live anyway, but to see them in the flesh playing it would be a real experience. Of course, it might be a very short show if they stuck to playing it as it was recorded, but I'd hope they'd whack out a bit and we'd be in for a real treat. In fact, getting to hear it played about with would be reason enough - great musicians really going for it. It's almost like a jazz album - you get the impression they would never play it the same way twice, it sounds like a moment captured (and from what I understand about how it was recorded, it pretty much is). It might not sound as good another time, but it might sound even better.