Surviving '100 years Mahorka'

Last year after I played Artmospheric I was pretty sure I have to stick to making open air shows. The feeling of your own music spreading in a free environment, and its interaction with nature was a factor too interesting to be not examined further. This year the event was way smaller, cosier and really DIY. Called '100 Years of Mahorka' and curated by the oldest Bulgarian net-label (Mahorka). Curated is a pretty strong word for what we experienced there so let's limit the description to initiated. It started in the night of June 28th in an awesome forest near a beach and some abandoned campsites some 20, 30 kilometres from Varna. We got there on the next (Saturday) morning after the usual 8 hours in the Sofia-Varna train, 3 of which by law spent on our feet. We found the generator dead as it ran out of gas several hours ago, just like all other survivors from last night. So we also lied down for an early nap.

Our roof

Around 10 most of the people hatched from their tents and hideouts. Several artists pussied about the lack of strict line up and organization and left the festival, as they I guess felt the need for somebody telling them what and when to do. In an hour the generator was filled with gas and Ivo at Skylined (one of the two main persons behind the event) started blasting his favorites among weird music. At a point we ran, or actually dragged ourselves to the beach, but shortly came back to find the 'stage' almost abandoned and our line up quickly started forming itself.

Line up in the making

Todor at r3s (whose stash of dried foods kept me alive, cus once again I was travelling cashless meaning also foodless) dropped a rad IDM set, heavily gravitating around the new Boards Of Canada. After him Moodix followed and he was totally an awesome discovery as so far I only knew him from several tracks from the old myspace. His melodic tracks with minimalist and grainy rhythms were a great soundtrack to the magical place we found ourselves in. After he finished it was my turn. The sun has started to hide and as Daniel at Deflax (whose set I sadly missed as he played the last night) noted the dusk was the perfect time for Mytrip. In 45 minutes of music I walked through looping and heavily resampled field recordings, effected beyond recognition recent tracks of mine, some of which will come out soon accompanying video works, and finally I continued with the usual layering of heavy, but this time quite more melodic, yet still abrasive soundscapes. I hope I'll be able to recreate some part of all I played and share it as I was having a lot of fun building my set. After me Portable Elephant came on stage, heavily equipped with guitar pedals and in general tons of gear. Thankfully it didn't rain during their set, because it would have been quite detrimental hahah. Their show was awesome and really interesting as usual. Angel and Kaloyan surely have been playing a lot together, because even improvising their sound was structured and co-ordinated which is amazing and makes their music really powerful. However Portable Elephant was the last live show for the night.

Portable Elephant Live @ 100 години Махорка (откъс)

Radio Noah from Varna came on stage after them and played the best DJ set for the day/night. Obscure ambient tracks, mixed in a very creative and detailed manner. This with the darkness that embraced our sacred place of isolation made Nikolay's performance really precious. After that I've fallen asleep on some jungle/dnb music. At a certain point I woke up to find Brokoli aboard with his signature set ranging from oldschool rave, to heavy breakcore and weird and crazy intermissions such as oldschool Bulgarian music (all hail the beloved Rosi Kirilova hahah). However, even his tunes weren't sufficient to beat my tiredness and at a point I've fallen asleep again wrapped in the sleeping bag. The next thing that woke me up were rain drops falling over me. We knew that on Sunday it's gonna rain, but we kinda expected it later and not at 4 o'clock in the morning.

I got up and started assembling my stuff, I put everything under a tree thinking it's just a tiny rain and it will pass soon. All around in the darkness there were people running around caring and hiding their gear. I saw Brokoli running all over the place screaming 'Fuck this shit, this is worse than the cops stopping your party". A car was brought to host the soundsystem as the rain was getting heavier and a certain point I realized we're kinda fucked up, as me and Plamen at fl3xibl3 were the only people with no tents. For a few moments, from perfectly calm I went pretty anxious as I realized I was already soaking wet and so was my backpack stuffed with gear. We found the table on the 'scene' and hid our shit there as it was the only place not touched but the rain. However water was slowly coming to flood it too, so we stayed under the rain just hoping it will pass soon. And it did actually slow down. That very same second we grabbed our stuff and headed for the bus stop which is some 15-20 minutes of walking down the road. It was already 4:40 so the sky started getting lighter and we were even able to see where we were walking. The rain didn't start again and we safely got to the bus stop. Thankfully our backpacks held our gear dry and this was the only thing that mattered. I dried myself and changed clothes. The rest was easy, a bus came to take us to Varna, then we walked around the grumpy morning city and at 10 I got on the train to Sliven. Too bad we couldn't say bye to our mates, as it was a great gathering, too bad the rain firmly ended the festival so early, and we missed a lot of sets, by people who travelled a lot to play, but I guess this was just another reason to do such a gathering again! Big ups to Oshogy, Ivo, VPD and everybody involved in organizing this. No ups for the people who pussied out instead of sticking to the event so we make it even bigger. But I guess this is the answer why we don't really have a stronger alternative scene in Bulgaria, cus people prefer their bedrooms and Internet as a showcase of their work, than the greater atmosphere of such a friendly and intimate event. Long live Mahorka. See you on your 1000 years anniversary!