ArcTangent: website
By: Chad Murray
Photos: Magda Wrzeszcz
According to the sign at the gate there are no drugs at ArcTanGent. That being said, I am about to disclose a whirlwind of ineffably spectacular and ebullient events the likes of which will entice you to said festival with a narcotic fervour. I came to ArcTanGent as the blank canvas of this writing body and left a part of a greater work. Here I met a team of some of the most delightful misfits you will ever come across, here I found a place where I felt comfortable in my own skin.
GOLD DAY
Straight from the car we flung our pop-up tent against the ground in instant festival desire. Straight to the smoke and alcohol once the camping formalities took root. Alpha Male Tea Party echoed through the distance, our flag sailed into the sky, we finished unpacking and then hurdled to Cleft. 
There’s an old adage that is often attributed when love and math come together, I found it displayed on a sign in ArcTanGent’s favourite tent Yokhai, that adage displayed ‘Cleft is Beft’ and that statement held true. The dynamic duo matched their excellent playing with their sense of humour and repeatedly poked fun at Alpha Male Tea Party “or whatever the fuck that first band were called” before blowing the collective cerebrum of the audience when the whole scouse triumvirate were manifested onto the stage for a closing mash-up. It was fucking boss. Riff after riff blasted the audience as the two bands collided in a veritable orgy of riffage. An orgy that included The Chain, raining blood and bullets in the head among other spectacular splendours. When the fun was over and we’d gotten used to the idea of two drummers playing simultaneously AK/DK replaced Alpha Male Cleft Party and expertly tore shit up. Never have two guys juggled drums, synths and vocals in such an entertaining fashion, that’s right fuck you mimes at Liverpool Lime Street, you got nothing. Seriously though, AK/DK’s promising premise delivers but, I guess these bands are almost emblematic of a festival that specialises in bat-shit arrangements and guano-inspired instrumental magnificence.
The next guy to take Yokhai was Mylets. This is a guy who is younger than I am and is fucking way more talented than I’ll ever be. Everyone rides Mylets’ dick. He’s just so fucking good. He weaves together beautiful, intricate guitar layers into a delicious web of instrumental ice cream like no other. A master of the loop pedal but, perhaps a novice of the microphone. He’s gonna get better at everything with age, when he reaches his prime in about ten years it’s hard to imagine what the prodigal genius will actually create but, it will probably carve us all new ears. Unlike, with some of his live sessions on this occasion he really didn’t project his vocals into the microphone enough which is kind of the only issue I had with his performance because his voice is obviously a personification of his music and whilst some may find it angsty and adolescent I find it entirely befitting.
Had a scran break and imbibed several of the alcohols then the next band I watched was 65daysofstatic and to be honest, I was fucked up in the best possible way. This is when the stage show really took prominence in the performance, I heard there was some shit going on aside from what happened with the band, dicks in the crowd trying to mosh and such but, I was really in a wormhole of lighting and design so, I didn’t really notice. When the band finally started performing, it was pretty much a definition of the word ‘sublime’. My favourite moment came when (possibly provoked by a fiery political interview with our editors Dan Salter & Hannah Morgan) one of the guys from the band, proclaimed that we must all “tear out George Osborne’s eyes and eat them like a fucking solero!” What an end to the performances 65days were… But, at ArcTanGent the fun never really stops (in the Flanders House).
The Silent Disco when you don’t grab headphones showcases some interesting moments of humanity such as perfect harmonies at strange moments of songs and military unison on the chorus of Rammstein’s ‘Du Hast’. Yet, I’m sure hearing the constant Mars Volta channel’s audience would have been an absolute blessing but, no one had the balls to tackle that it seems. I took some time to get a stingy burrito with my brother, I can honestly say that I think it gave me the shits the next day. It wasn’t all that nice either, a total rarity at ArcTanGent. Jake and I also took the time to venture through the fog and spectral lights into the next field after overcoming some fences. It was a nice trip, I really enjoyed the view, definitely czech it out if you go to ArcTanGent, sometimes you just have to find a moment to explore. We found our tent via the flag eventually and then the night called it a murray.
FRIDAY, I’M IN LOVE… WITH ARCTANGENT (I KNOW CHEESY RIGHT?)
I awoke the next morning with a fucking hangover. We drank something like 25 beers between us the day before so, it was to be expected, hip flasks are fun as well. But, we were camping with the lovelyboys from Trojan Horse so, obviously we had to watch them. I lay on the ground briefly beforehand to help my various hangover cures to kick in and if it was any other band playing I swear I would’ve given up but, having not seen Trojan Horse before, I thought I’d give them a shot. It was fucking glorious. So good. So, so good. The hilarity, the insanity that ensues when them crazy fuckers get on stage is unbelievable. A lot of crazy, funny guys at ArcTanGent but, even hungover I was laughing my ass off from Trojan Horse. The faces they make, the bizarre screaming, stripping and costume. They’re absolute legends. I hope they play again next year so, I can watch them without eagle claws tearing through my consciousness.
We went to see another Echoes & Dust favourite after Trojan Horse; The Fierce and The Dead. I had discovered TFATD completely by random back when post-rock was still shiny and new to me and they had a small amount of songs online. It was cool finding out that the rest of the team knew them at various points too. They’re boss to watch live. Considering they’re probably all at least twice my age they all rock about twenty five times harder. Matt Stevens is such an incredible musician. It was cool seeing the team all talking to him as a friend after the gig as well, in my sheepish social demeanor I just kind of watched from the sidelines as someone I admired as a legend became human, as would occur time and time again throughout ArcTanGent.
I believe the next band we watched were Pocket Apocalypse, who were surprisingly poppy for ArcTanGent. In an ATG kind of way though. Having never heard them before, I kind of compiled mental images of the guys listening to Tool, Smashing Pumpkins and Silversun Pickups (just from the lead singer’s t-shirt). I like all of those bands but, obviously this festival has a reputation as kind of a musical freak show of erotically enticing oddities. Pocket Apocalypse are a good band, not one of my favourites from the festival but, PX3 being somewhat of an up-and-coming stage definitely showcases them as one to watch for the future, I reckon there’s a real potential in the group depending on the direction they go on, hopefully of the three aforementioned influences they lean towards Tool going forward.
The next band we watched, I say watched…The next band we witnessed were Her Name is Calla back at Yokai. And they were fucking incredible. Members of the Echoes & Dust team got teary-eyed very quickly for Calla. In my sociopathic black heart I felt a joyous defrosting as Tom Morris 
crooned the defibrillating opening masterpiece. To my shame, I only recently discovered Calla and before going to the festival knew they were one of my ones to watch but I was fucking destroyed by how good they were. Watching Tom perform made me feel like I was watching Ian Curtis. This was a complete exhibition of an artist baring his soul and the audience’s sorrow was unleashed in a cathartic joy, as we all unraveled ourselves into his hands. The rest of the band are needless to say right up there with any of the great pantheon of post-rock bands that you could muster. Watching the symmetrical dance of violins and the violence of the rhythm section is something to behold. Yet, it always seems to come back to Tom in songs like New England and Pour More Oil. Crowd favourites for an audience of isolated, esoteric introverts. Their ten year journey to ArcTanGent fraught with loss, heart break and betrayal, Her Name is Calla dominated as the musical zenith of the festival. And every inch of that journey led to Her Name is Calla being one of the most beautifully artistic bands I’ve ever witnessed. I don’t feel like that is an overstatement, over time it might even be proven as an understatement.
Following Her Name is Calla we grabbed some pretty awesome pizza and smoked a fuck load of shisha. This period is kind of a haze but, we found time to bob around Maybeshewill (who I found a bit samey really, as mi hermano agreed), Helms Alee (again quite samey) and eventually Blanck Mass (who started off with a massive drone that forced us to leave). We did pass Blanck Mass a few times later on and I really wish I’d caught more ‘cause after that initial twenty minutes of, what everyone seemed to agree, was self-indulgent bullshit, it really sounded like it got good but, we had got gone and once we get gone we done gone get goodly gone.
I put my legendary mess of an older brother to bed around the time of Dillinger Escape Plan, he was a fine portrait of intoxication and one to admire as the star of ArcTanGent. A real human highlight reel. I would’ve liked to have gone to Dillinger Escape Plan and get thrown around for a while but, I listened to the whole gig from afar and it sounded fucking mental. The frontman dived off of scaffolds and the crowd were fucking nuts. I was pretty pooped and the long night was just beginning.
Jake “The Beast Awakens” Murray awoke from his sleep after Dillinger and we took a walk down to the silent disco and then over to the fire pit were we bumped into ATG’s own demigod, Tom Morris. I was in full fangirl mode along with Jake and Dylan who were also in total fan girl mode, though they probably would dispute this. I’m not sure exactly how it happened but, we ended up getting him to drink with us and by the end of it we’d got him fucked up on a thermos of Zabrowka we decided to bring. This modern day master, this champion of the musical citadel that I’d witnessed earlier on in the day suddenly transmogrified into a drunk man. A horny, hilarious drunk man. And then into a zombified, paralytic mortal. It was incredible.
“Sup”… soon became a reoccurring joke as one of the only words this guy could say as we chauffeured him around various locations before he finally passed out wearing my sunglasses basically in a pit of fire. By this point, Dylan had already gone to bed, I was suitably intoxicated and mein bruder was rivalling his Courney Love t-shirt in the fucked-up department so, with great effort we picked up this dead-weight artist and carried him to security who decided to escort us to the band’s barn where Maybeshewill eventually decided (following plenty of japes at our expense) that they knew Tom.
Jake and I bumped into a friend of his in the mist shortly after and I saw a friend of a friend making out with his latest fling into the early hours of the morning, it was a bizarre night. I fucking love ArcTanGent.
SATURDAY WAIT
Our Saturday kicked off with some pasties and some Polymath. These guys were the next funniest band behind Trojan Horse but, they’re not really comedy-orientated as a band it would seem. Musically, they’re a fucking mathematical explosion but, personally, they’re a comedically gurning band of banana throwing deviants. I loved it. Definitely one of the most crowd pleasing performances of the whole festival. Although, thunder clapped for Her Name Is Calla, the audience wept tears of joy for the madness of Polymath. I think the next act we saw was Gum Takes Tooth also in Bixler, which was cool. We sat down exhausted for the start of it but, the excellence of the duo quickly took over. My only reference points for these guys are bands like Vessels and HEALTH which I’d say they don’t exactly sound like either but, I hold both of those acts in high regards so, definitely not a bad comparison. I think we all agreed that these guys were the dark horse of the festival in that we didn’t expect them to be as good as they were and they were one of the best bands we saw. *note that we walked out of a few we didn’t know because we were unimpressed and a few we did know because we were disappointed, the important word here is “few” though.
Around this time Jake had been bestowed the E&D crew’s most dubious prestigious honour of wearing a t-shirt that simply read “I Am A Disgrace”. It had previously belonged to Gavin, one of the many awesome members of the crew that I got to meet for the first time at was described to me as a festival that also serves as somewhat of an “annual Echoes and Dust board meeting.” After this it got really fucking hot and I had to take my shirt off and get some lunch, that’s right, I was semi-naked. Tits out and loving it. As we headed for Pg. Lost it started to pissed down and I got my only shower of the festival courtesy of the furious British weather, through the amount of alcohol and other funaries I’d imbibed this rain did not slow me down but, put me into a heightened state of euphoria. I even somehow got into the spirit to dance as the last bastion of post-rock at ATG regarded fire onto their fallen peers. This is how we do it, they bellowed through expert crescendoes and the audience (including some small children that the best parents in Britain brought to the best festival in Britain) fucking loved it.
We transported ourselves from to Pg. Lost to Marriages who were fucking awesome, awe-inspiring and oh-so awfully good. There’s a reason that the 
Mount Rushmore of ATG is built to feature the faces of Emma Ruth Rundle, Sophie Green and John From Cleft and it’s because they all fucking rock and they all pulled double-duty. John’s addition Trojan Horse was really something special but, Emma Ruth Rundle’s solo set would have been must-see for die-hard fans…wasn’t really what I was going for at the time though unfortunately because she is fucking boss. Marriages were definitely in my top five for ArcTanGent. There’s something about them. An inexpressible power that radiates from the band; a shocking dystopian allure like watching the end of days through a sludge-soaked manhole. Watching the songs from Salome live gives them an unimaginable extra dimension, I can only compare it to imagining putting your hand in a fire and then placing your hand willingly into a fire. In fact, that’s ATG in a nutshell, it’s one thing to see the line-up on a JPEG it’s another thing to actually be at the festival.
I divided the remainder of the festival between Cult of Luna, Vessels and Alright The Captain. I really enjoyed the majority of the Vessels set that I saw. They’re a pretty progressive band so, it was hard to really know what to expect with them. I didn’t know how certain songs might factor in and what their style would be like live by this point and to be honest, I don’t really remember having much of an organised thought during it, I was just lost in the moment. Until brother mine decided we had to leave and collapsed on Gavin and then an ageing hippy (who’s knee collided with Jake’s head and probably caused him to tear a quad given that Jake suffered nothing until the next day, his head was fine though). Jake in a last gasp urged me to watched Cult of Luna due to the band slowly winding down as a touring band and I really enjoyed them instrumentally and it was amazing that they actually got to play after their flight being cancelled but, the vocals quickly began to bore me and I returned to catch the end of Alright The Captain after a while. Alright The Captain were a highlight for most of the team, I wish I had watched more of them but, I know having not seen Cult of Luna at all would’ve sucked balls; they did have some pretty amazing visuals and arrangement after all. I finished the night with some amazing bhajis and fizzy pop courtesy of Dylan, we took the time to reflect on the festival and bitch about The Beatles once more before calling it a night…I came to the conclusion that I had finally found a place where I belong, a people I felt a kinsmanship with and a brother who had secretly been as mental as I was all along. And it was all soundtracked by some of the best musical performances I’ve ever witnessed.
APPENDAGE
With ArcTanGent over, we abandoned my mum’s pop-up tent, sorry mum. It was pissing down and we couldn’t hack trying to get a trapezium into a circle having not had much sleep and having imbibed way less water than we intended, nowhere near enough fizzy pop and far too much serotonin inducing goodness; a recipe for exhaustion not a viable instruction manual for a bastard tent in a muddy field. Jake to his credit had rested up enough and drove us home. I just wanna say thank you to everyone from our team: Gavin, Magda, Sam, Dylan, Kunal, Ed, Chris, Trojan Horse, Matias (great travelling with you man), Mike and Chris from Goodsoul Promotions. Special thanks to Dan and Hannah [aka Dannah] for setting up one of the most amazing things in the world, Aïcha for being amazing when dealing with us Murrays and an endless thank you to the gangly standard bearer of Echoes & Dust, my hero, my captain, my brother, Jake Murray whose nepotism/fraternalism got me into this team and whose penchant for hedonistic self-destruction is an inspiration to us all.
Sorry if I missed anyone out… ATG and everyone involved my gratitude to you goes without saying but, I will be seeing you again to show it, as often as I can.
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