Pitchfork

The second All Tomorrow's Parties festival of 2007 will take place May 18-20 at Butlins Minehead in Somerset, England, and the first bands on the lineup are Built to Spill, the Notwist, Sparklehorse, Echo & the Bunnymen, Akron/Family, Do Make Say Think, Brightblack Morning Light, and Death Vessel. (As previously reported, the first ATP is the Dirty Three-curated one, happening April 27-29, and featuring Dirty Three, Low, Nick Cave's new band Grinderman, Bill Callahan [formerly Smog], Shannon Wright, Papa M, the Drones, Faun Fables, Devastations, A Silver Mount Zion, Magnolia Electric Co., and many more.)

The biggest announcement, however, is the curators of the festival (or half of it, anyway): the fans. When festival-goers purchase their tickets, ATP will give them directions to a website where they will list the ten bands they would most like to see play. ATP will tally the votes and list them on their website in order of popularity. The bands at the top of the list will receive invitations first, which means earlier votes will have more impact than later ones. If these bands accept their invitations, they will form half of the festival's lineup. The other half will be chosen by ATP (as in the case of Built to Spill et al.).

Voting begins on November 24, and because they do such a good job of explaining the specifics themselves, here are the official rules, via the ATP website:

"Some things to keep in mind.

The resort has a capacity of less than 6,000. Please bear this in mind when making your choices. You can ask for someone like Bob Dylan or the Rolling Stones, but they will inevitably be considerably more expensive than the whole line-up put together, thus wasting one of your choices.

We are unable to raise the dead.

Just because a band is at the top of the list does not mean they will play. They have to be available and have to want to do it.

If you put a band that is taking a hiatus or has broken up several years ago, please consider that you might be wasting a vote. You might not be, so you are welcome to take a chance, but an artist has to want to.

You cannot vote for the same band twice.

You cannot vote twice.

If you are the one that has bought the apartment and you feel you have a right to then take all the votes, please bear in mind you will have to share your weekend with people who did not get a chance to vote because of you.

Any attempt to manipulate the voting system will be taken very seriously by ATP and could lead to your votes being disqualified. Play fair. Choose wisely."