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.
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| Our roof |
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| Line up in the making |
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!
