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He pours water from a kettle into the gaping, welcoming mouths of his fans, before climbing up into the ceiling, ridiculous glittery costume trailing in his wake. This at 5pm on the Friday. First band of the weekend. Good to see Tim Harrington starting off the day as he intends it to continue.
Welcome to Les Savy Fav's rock day, where everything is, yes, loud, but innovative too. Take Marnie Stern, for example, and her infamously fleet fingers. How she makes such densely note-packed songs sound intruiging - and not as OTT as Dragonforce - is a mystery, but she does it as effortlessly as she talks to the crowd about vaginas.
Surfer Blood aren't as confident but, bless them, I had no idea how young they were. Maybe that's why their music's nothing but innocent stories of Floridian waves. It's a happy change from Minehead's oppressive coast.
It should maybe be a surprise that Oxes don't end up on that frigid beach during their set. Their wireless guitars let them go everywhere else: in the crowd; atop speakers; backstage. All while chucking out a ceaseless barrage of riffs - oh, and a cover of Wild Thing.
Next are the weekend's worst clashes, as Archers of Loaf and No Age simultaneously play apparently triumphant sets. I wouldn't know; I was at Future Islands and I can't regret it. Singer Sam Herring carries the room on his shoulders; polite and humble between songs, but wide-eyed and maniacal as soon as his band's minimal synth-pop starts up. I intended to watch only half of the set but after that long leaving was out of the question. I challenge anyone to do it.
An hour later there's another sad clash - hundreds of queuers have to hear Holy Fuck from outside in the cold. To those just exiting from Hot Snakes, though, it's hard to feel bad about it. They play rock music at it's most instinctive: loud and rhythmic. There's just no resisting it. An hour of two minute firecrackers, with barely a pause between them. It's hard to imagine how you could distil punk's essence any further.
Hot Snakes may have the songs, but Les Savy Fav don't even need them. The band might as well be an amp looping feedback over a drumbeat; it's just a canvas onto which vocalist Tim Harrington can vomit glitter. Vocalist? Perhaps he's not even that. A rock and roll cheerleader, on this occasion wrapped in multiple latex bodysuits like a human pass the parcel, who makes the experience personal for everyone in the room by draping himself over every single one of them. Rumour has it that this was their last show ever. What a way to go.
Battles' day starts the weekend's move from rock towards dance. Nisennenmondai are, in a way, both - but in another way they're neither. They stubbornly refuse to give you a big riff, a big drop, or any obvious hooks whatsoever. But they worm their way in. The rhythms are repetitive, hypnotically so, but then something miniscule changes that against this ceaseless background sounds tectonic.
My first encounter with Gary Numan was as a teenage metal fan, when Fear Factory covered him. Back then I thought the song was an odd mix: 80s synth pop chalk versus industrial metal cheese. Now, however, I realise that the band needn't really have bothered - Numan is Fear Factory already. He's black clothes and nu-metal riffs, oozing across the stage like a viscous sludge. Silly, but helplessly fun.
One man with a laptop can be a boring live experience - even, it sometimes seems, for the static knob-twiddler pressing play. Flying Lotus, however, loves every second of his time on stage, and it's utterly infectious. From the pogo-ing masses at the front to the toe-tappers at the back, everybody, absolutely everybody in the room is moving at least something. That's even before he remixes Radiohead, an endeavour that couldn't possibly find itself a more appropriate audience.
Battles have to follow this. It's tricky because A) They've just watched all of their favourite bands, and B) They're now without their most prominent member. Ian Williams is promoted to fruity maths-teacher-in-chief, champion of camp dancing and oddly-tilted keyboards. Disappointingly, the evening set is nearly the same as the early-afternoon one. Worse, the songs' guest vocals are inexplicably done using video and recorded sound - Gary Numan and Matias Aguayo are in Minehead! Get them up there! Still, songs like Atlas are as irresistable now as they ever were.
"You look tired", Caribou's Dan Snaith tells his early Sunday crowd. "We are too". I think everyone in Minehead is. We're certainly not in the mood for this audio wet flannel - a mix of weak vocals, slushy jazz and the limpest of beats. Connan Mockasin at least aims to be blearily vague, like the colourful sketchbook of a tired child. Here is Sunday: the old film you're both enjoying and not really watching.
Toro Y Moi picks up the mood, with funk so brazen that it feels like we've stumbled into a normal Butlin's weekend. Slowly, ever so slowly, the day's atmosphere creeps towards Friday and Saturday's previous peaks. Omar Souleyman seems to get people dancing by merely gesturing that they should do so. By the time Factory Floor unleash themselves everybody's lost their minds again. Who even needs rock music? This is as brutal; dance music that aims straight for the gut. It's the insistent stamping of a heavy boot, over and over, rumbling your organs in their weak, fleshy cases.
And so, at gone midnight at the very end of a draining weekend, the Caribou Vibration Ensemble have to improve upon their earlier attempt at entertaining a crowd that has already been treated to everything they ever wanted. 89-year-old saxophonists share space with endless percussionists and infinite synths - there's a danger that too many cooks will spoil the broth. Or perhaps the audience will, halfway through, simply fall over from exhaustion. Instead, this turns out to be the most cerebral, irresistable performance of the weekend. It's liquid dance music, pouring intricate texture into every corner of the room while simultaneously tapping into that basic element of the human brain that says "dance...dance and don't stop". The whole room is powerless; it's as unifying an experience as any of us reserved British have ever felt in our lives.
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