Elektronika Music Festival has come and gone

OK, it's monday morning, busy having my first cuppa, sitting reflecting on the Elektronika Music Festival this past weekend.

Here's the lowdown:

Woke up at 8am on Saturday morning, got everything packed & ready to roll:

1 x Pair of Sennheiser HD-25 Headphones
2 x SL1200 turntables
±150 DnB vinyls (ranging from old jungle classics to neurofunk to the latest bangers)
1 x touchscreen (for diplaying the software we wrote to create awareness of the reason behind the event)
2 x raving DnB lunatics ready for a party

We eventually left at around 9:30am. Needed to stop to get a poster printed, which took 45 minutes because the dumbf*cks at Jetline Print in Bryanston don't know how to use their own equipment. Poster got printed. Finally got on the road at 10:20am.

In a moment of total brain lapse on my part, we ended up taking the wrong road out of Johannesburg towards Hartbeespoort, which extended the road trip by about 20 minutes. We eventually arrived at the venue at 11:35am. Damn it was hot!!!

The sound had already been set up (with no monitor!!!), so all we needed to do was set up the decks, which we did. A few beers later we were playing hackysack in the sun with the boys from the Reflex crew.

Grabbed a shnooze in the shade for an hour or so, and then the skies broke & let out a little rain. Being an outdoor event, this was a bit concerning as we weren't sure if it was going to stop. Finally the rain stopped threatening and more people started arriving. A bit later some more friends of mine arrived. Thank God for that cos everyone one else was tripping their tits off and you couldn't have any sort of conversation with anyone. Felt a bit spare cos I'm not into taking acid. You know how it goes.

We walked around, inhaled some greens, spoke shit and had beers. By now the pace of the music had picked up and people were dancing. Next up was Tasha's new band called MUTHATUNG, they were really good!! Man, she's got a really great voice. It's no wonder she's off pretty soon to the Netherlands to record 17 songs in 12 days!! Good luck :) One piece of advice I can offer her for her live performances is "Don't worry about mindless chatter inbetween songs. People want to hear your songs, so don't talk, just sing." :) :) :)

After that David played some chilled out beats to get the floor going again. 10pm came and it was time for Dane & I to play an hour of back2back DnB classics, which the floor seemed to enjoy.

11pm now and it's time for me to play 2 hours of hard & fast beats. Thwe first hour went OK and people were really getting down, but then I sort of lost it. There was not monitor behind the booth, so the delay from the dancefloor was quite considerable. I know it's really no excuse if you've been playing for as long as I have, but that's my story and I'm sticking to it ;)

About 1h20mins into my set I gave up and asked Tasha to come and finish for me cos I really wasn't "feeling" my set at all. And in my opinion the sooner I got off the better. Sad, but true.

After that, Dane played some caning beats, which the crowd enjoyed. While he was playing the drinks got flowing & before long we were all quite pissed & stoned.

I'm not quite sure of what was happening on the DnB floor after that cos I walked around with some friends, grabbed a "horrog" (that's SefrikanEnglish for "Hotdog") and some pancakes. Walked around some more, spent some time on the Trance floor & vistied the House floor for a bit too.

Eventually at about 4am, I grabbed my tunes from the DJBox & put them in Dane's car. Mike, Garrick & I then went back to Mike's car and chilled inside for a bit as it was starting to get a bit chilly.

We slept & woke at 7:30 in the morning, got packed & hit the road.

The event itself was not as well attended as the organisers had planned, but everyone had a good time. I just wish it were 8am Saturday morning all over again.

:)