So it is Saturday, the morning after
Frenchbulldog's
debut. The alarm rings once and few minutes later I miss the first train, it's set again, it rings and some half an hour later I miss one more train. However it is already day two of the
Artmospheric Festival 2012. It is 11 o'clock and at 19:00 I gotta start playing the small stage as
Mytrip. So I had to take the train at 14:20 which means at the hottest time of the day - awesomeness.
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| All hail that machine and its driver | |
After an hour of tram waiting/catching I'm at the station and then in the train. I won't go into any details of how hot it was because I could write a shorty story and a bunch of poems about that, I'll just go on instead. After an hour and a half I reach the station from where a bus is supposed to take us to the Festival place. It comes shortly after my arrival there and it is ANCIENT. The temperature inside is 10 degrees hotter than outside, which is radical. However we pack in and it leaves. The next 50 minutes pass slowly as the road is pretty fucked up and there's pretty much nothing you can do but drive slow as hell. In fact the bus almost broke down during the next other courses. But it succeeded in taking us up, then in taking us down the next day. And I guess it survived even few more courses.
When the bus reached the bio farm we had 15 minutes more to walk and then we reached the place that for the last six years successfully succeeded in making few people feel like home (as overheard in the bus). And all the heat, travelling and shaking is nothing compared to what an awesome place it really is. I don't wanna post photos, I haven't made any just because you have to go there and experience it personally any other words/visuals are only a major spoiler.
What I can say is that the festival surely deserves its name. The atmosphere is amazing and everywhere you reach all kinds of art forms. From the great vegan food to every single artist performing during the festival. Artmospheric 2012 was the first one for me in many aspects. First of all I am not a huge open air person. I like nature but I'm not dedicated to spending all my free time in woods and mountains with my ass itching from insect bites. So having in mind that, I can tell I had great time though I'm definitely not a neo hippie. It was also the first Artmospheric event I am visiting and I can't say there were artists I was really eager to see/hear live. But I really enjoyed some. I really enjoyed Auditory Oscicles, Soulslept, Genda and few acts on the main stage but I have no idea who they were. It was really interesting for me that people still listen/play/mix trance music. My experience with that genre ended early in my childhood and since around year 2000 I have no idea what's going on with that type of music. Anyway I heard some stuff that wasn't bad still not my cup of tea. What else I thought about is that IDM is one of the over exploited genres of our times and it has reached a state of development where you can pretty much do nothing original. I guess it applies to many genres but especially when they are that specific you have to watch just three different artists and you get to that conclusion. However I still dig it more than trance.
And as a final aspect, Artmospheric 2012 was the first time I am playing an open air with any of my projects. And it was awesome. I have no idea if people actually watched/heard my set because when I play ambient I tend to become over focused and barely have the need to look at the world or the humyns around me. It was a totally different feel about how the sounds were communicating with ambience that wasn't walls of a closed artificially built space. I played during the day so I couldn't go as deep and dark as I usually do and my set became a quite weird mixture of unpublished and even improvised rhythmic and melodic stuff. The usual ambient structures and textures I use were reaching really weird forms and contexts. The organised chaos that was accompanying the festival was also one awesome thing that really, really influenced my playing. There was a schedule and two well-equipped stages. Everything else was in the hands of the artists. You go, wait for your slot, then plug-in and play. When you're done you leave and do whatever you want. That total freedom makes it more than pleasure to be involved.
I guess that's pretty much all I wanted to say. I could talk about the sky and the smell of timber and a bunch of other stuff for hours but just go there and experience it. No words can describe falling asleep while someone is playing live, then waking up at 6 the next day when someone else is starting something else. That mixture of total freedom, comfort plus the sense not a second is wasted and the event is so saturated with happenings - that's just insane!
The day after I played was also full of rad music but I had to go so I can chill out at a bit at home before I hit the road today again. And in a vortex of radical heat (for me), slow transportation and tons of recollections I reach civilization that... well it is also worth experiencing. However I hope I'll be able to play more open air festivals as soon as possible!
