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Rather than bring you our "small seeds" or an end of year "Best of" list, this month we thought we'd break from tradition and bring you an un-seasonal  report from a festival .

The HongKongGardeners went off on a trip to All Tomorrow's Parties in Minehead for the "Nightmare before Christmas" show on the 4^th-6^th December. The event was curated by 90's indie noise-mongers My Bloody Valentine, who not only booked the bands but also arranged 3 days worth of TV channels for viewing in the festival chalets.  As you would expect the line-up for both the bands and films was both art-rock and eclectic, with delights as diverse as David Essex movie "Stardust" and  avant-garde jazz pioneers Sunn Ra Arkestra.

The whole ATP experience is a bewildering one. It takes place in Butlins giant tented shopping and retail centre, surrounded by chalets which would not have looked out of place in 1970s movies about concentration camps. The festival goers are not the usual party-hungry teens and crusty hippies, but a crowd who would not look out of place wandering around art galleries with a strategically placed copy of Kafka under their arm.  These are the uber-indies. Black framed glasses, stripey tops, scarves galore- they are music savvy, geeky and almost entirely male. For the female ATP goers the 10 boys to 1 girl ratio is a massive bonus in that you will rarely have to queue for a loo, and being uber-indies you are unlikely to get sexually harassed (although you might have a poem written about you).

The main stage is surrounded by Costa coffee, Burger King and an arcade, which is a bizarre backdrop to this anti- commercial festival. There are none of the usual festival sponsorships in operation, indeed they have a whole range of bizarre local ales with names like "Stag" and "Beast"  on offer instead of the usual branded ciders.

Our highlights included:

Friday night's main stage action was kicked off by the infectiously happy De La Soul. Celebrating 20 years of their album "3 Feet High and Rising", their set was like musical MDMA, with thousands of indie kids bouncing their hands in time to their hip-hop back catalogue. The only small disappointment being the lack of "3 is the magic number", but we forgave them for not playing their biggest hit at this most obscure of festivals.

Saturday saw lanky former Goths The Horrors playing a note perfect rendition of their latest album "A Sea within a sea". Borrowing sounds from festival hosts My Bloody Valentine and 80s inspiration from Echo and the Bunnymen and The Psychedelic Furs, Faris and the boys put in an atmospheric and enticing performance. It was also apparent that despite the boy/girl ratio at the festival as a whole, most of the front row were female...

Sunday brought a little slice of New York cool to the bland Butlins centre stage. Noisy American band A Place to Bury Strangers turned a damp Sunday afternoon in the sterile bar area into the interior of a bleak basement. Only lit from behind, with tonnes of smoke on stage, the 3 members of APTBS create a noise that would not be out of place on the soundtrack to many slasher movies. They create walls of My Bloody Valentine style noise, but with some old fashioned rock and roll tunes permeating the squall. 2 extra guitarists join them onstage to go into full destruction mode, with front man Oliver Ackerman repeatedly shooing a sound man out the way while he tries to put right all the upturned equipment.  The crowd were divided on their music, but pretty much everyone was sold on their performance.

The end of the festival for us was the curators themselves, My Bloody Valentine. Having chosen our Sunday night performance wristbands due to “noise limitations” were only able to play in the smaller second stage so overcame this by paying all three nights.  Earplugs were handed out as per MBV tradition on entry and they were needed for the 20 odd minutes of feedback we were treated too in the bands traditional closer "You made me realise".

All in all this was definitely a festival we will be returning to, keep an eye on the ATP website for further events, including the Matt Groening curated ATP in May next year which is already on it’s way to selling out.