blooooooc!

first day back at work after Bloc, and don't actually feel too bad!

Friday, we arrived at the Pontins around 8pm, just before the buses arrived with droves of revellers, so we managed to get checked in quite quickly; Thanks to Derek and Lisa, from the Wire, who i was rooming with, we got a pretty decent vip room - when i say decent, i only mean comparitively so!

Already the crowds of people were looking pretty mashed up and messy, which was pretty much how they were for the whole weekend! Musically, on friday night, the only thing i got really into were the Skull Disco DJ sets from Appleblim and Peverelist, but it was a long fun night anyhow.

Saturday, on a little sleep, we somehow made it out of the chalet for 3pm to see Christ playing, which turned out to be excellent, the sound system totally did his music justice and even so early on the day, there was a good turnout. Rustie was also on pretty early, around 5pm i think - he was fscking awesome again. The saturday evening definitely had the best lineup, and I caught a few really good shows - Monolake (with no sign of T++!) played an amazing set, which may well have been one of my highlights; the other highlights for me personally were Kode 9's set, Skream DJ set, and The Bug's live show, and then.. wow.. Juan Atkins was stunning. The second track he dropped was by Redshape, to which i went a bit nuts, but yeah, fully plus8 banging techno and soo good!

Sunday checked out some of Boxcutter, which was better than i was expected, but the decision was made to drive back on sunday eve and have a whole day off on monday rather than travel home on monday.

A great fun weekend, all in all, but on reflection, i think the festival itself was quite lacking - there didn't seem to be much effort put into making it an overall good experience, even down to the festival program being really cheaply designed, and compared to the small collectible packs you get from ATP, didn't seem worth holding onto, just a badly designed four page A5 booklet with adverts. With the abundance of festivals these days, I feel if you want to make something special, you have to make a good deal of effort and think about the details, rather than just a good lineup and bringing 2500 people to a kinda skanky holiday park. still - quite fun!

Labels: bloc, festival, rant, reviews

Thursday, December 6, 2007

my wee first post

Aiight, this is my secret post - the one where you know no-one is reading, cos no-one knows about the blog yet! Why another blog? Well, sometimes you get excited about things that don't quite fit into the news items, and that you don't want to overload the news page with. So i guess this is the Extras section where I plan on writing some reviews, or give some background info on what is happening with the label, updates on projects, podcasts, and possibly the occasional rant!

So by way of a first post, I'll point a link over to this months Monolake free download -
http://monolake.de/downloads/free_track.html. As probably loads of you know who follow Highpoint Lowlife, Monolake/Robert Henke has an excellent site/blog constantly updated with news and free tracks to download, usually updated at least once a month. Dave/Erstlaub reminded me about this months, which i downloaded a few days ago. It was only last night i had a chance to listen to it - walking in the rain, wrapped in a massive jacket and with my ipod buds in my ears - the track is soo fucking good! Built around a core sample of a water drop which Robert explains was "recorded in my bathtub in april 1993" - the track evolves at a slighly more than glacial speed, shimmering chords gradually sliding into the foreground and a rhythmic muted pulse carry you along effortlessly. At 34 mins long, its a well generous free download, and highly recommended. Check the site link for a bit more info on the track's process and for the download itself.

rar!
thor

Labels: downloads, first, monolake, rant