'Trainbient II' Days 4, 5 (Varna, Plovdiv)

18/03/13 Varna, Bulgaria @ Bolla

w/ r3s, Swamp Fire

I guess it's someone else's place but it's mine also.

Getting from Rousse to Varna was a paradise. A travel less than two hours long, and you're there. I barely oppressed my urge to run from the station to the beach and walked slowly instead (mainly because of my two backpacks, which were probably heavier than my own weight). At first it was windy as hell, but still I have to admit I may spent some 2, 3 hours just staring at the immense blue mate, who for the last three years I've been visiting quite often. I actually suspect my whole persistence to play Varna each time I hit the road is rather because I wanna have my several hours alone with the sea, than to play my shitty music. Anyhow, at a point the wind got too much and I moved to the cosy café, which's also quite traditional for my/our Varna visits. When the clock pointed a bit after 18 I moved to the venue. There I found a wooden DIY door replacing the old glass one. I have no idea why this 'artistic' choice led to me being paranoic, but after the resulting bunch of phone calls, texts and whatnot everything was settled by the info, that the bar actually is open at 19 and the old door had to be replaced whaha. When I finally got I quickly unpacked (and somehow lost the remains of my oathmeal reserve, which the next day had an almost detrimental effect). Martin's (t)rusty mixing board was at his moodiest and I was the only one who could use it that night, the guys at r3s and Swamp Fire decided to play by interconnecting their PCs which was also effective enough. Before starting the show I had the chance to hang out with my main Varna mate Yana, and I got a birthday present that had been waiting for me since last summer. Cool ha? At 20:30 I started playing. All shows so far had been tortured by tech problems due to my slowly degrading laptop and that night the crap reached its climax. I was pretty much closing one of the deepest, most minimalist and blackest drone sets I've played so far when a huge boom was heard and my laptop battery died. The charger was putting noise in the mix (as it mostly does) so I had no other choice but leave the stage to the others. Too bad, cus I was reaching such an evil and mesmerizing sound. It's cool that people enjoyed it even after that sudden ending and actually wanted me to play more of it. It's a cool reason to come back in Varna with a working laptop. Afterwards r3s and Swamp Fire dropped a rad and diverse b2b live set with music from ambient to IDM, I talked with a dude who seemed to be a lot into noise and drone doom and then headed with Ivo to his place. There at a point between the tiger attack videos, chick-stalker talks and anti-cop butt tattoos we shut down and slept until 9 the next morning. 

the day sounded like: Chicaloyoh, Siyanie, Neznamo, Indo

19/03/13 Plovdiv @ Gramophone Club

w/ Deflax

Getting up at 9:20 looked like a smart decision while I was sleeping, cus Ivo lives about 10 minutes away from the train station, and I bought a ticket the day before. However I got exactly on time for the train and didn't have the chance to buy neither food, nor water, and I even left the house without drinking a single sip. Everyone around me (old dudes and dudettes) had their huge bottles of water and the train didn't stop anywhere for long enough to get my own and I'm talking about 7 hours. I was overwhelmed by water envy. I'm not a person easily giving up due to physical needs, but the second I got off the train I was pouring water and stuffing food down my throat. GREAT TIMES. The weather in Plovdiv was rad, the wind that welcome me at first quickly disappeared, and I hanged out around the city a bit before getting in the venue to set up. That happened around 19, I had just left my laptop to charge, when my hosts Danail and Neff arrived. I went out for a walk with them, we got in a Chinese place so they can grab a bit. While we were there another friend called that she will come to say hi, cus hell it's been ages since we saw each other. We caught up a bit, in one cigarette time exactly, and we got back to the venue. Daniel at Deflax was there and already connected to a fancy DJ mixer that was actually meant to be used on the trance party scheduled after our short ambient evening. I qucikly connected to the same device and for two hours we did a crazy b2b ambient set. I played my stuff, improvised a bit over it and at a point I started playing around with some music by other people. It was fun, we laughed a lot, because it was going on so well as if we've been doing this together for ages. Mixing ambient is great, because it always ends up in something weird that sounds like none of the pieces, which you are actually playing, no matter if those are your own tunes or someone else's. At 22 the trance DJs took over and we packed our stuff. I met some cool people who I only knew from third parties or from the Internet and left for Komatevo, Danail's neighborhood. After a short tour during which I got introduced to the cemetary, bakery, courier office and the ghost house we reached his place. Neff asked me to beat Danail at some game, and I had to kick his ass on Street Fighter on his own arcade. Probably it was luck, but maybe it was Satan playing for me, you'll never know. After that I went to the attic where all bands, which they're bringing to Plovdiv with Youngblood Booking are sleeping, and feeling like Michael Jackson I fell asleep. The next morning was early, but easy. Tonight I'm finally sleeping at home and tomorrow the tour ends with a show I've been waiting since January.

the day sounded like: Julia Holter, Laurel Halo & Daniel Wohl (together)