Well just got back from Organic. Drove up the mountain yesterday
feeling quite fucking awful (anyone else hate those mountain
roads?), but was kept entertained along the way by watching all the
ravers huddled around broken down cars at the turn-offs. Every turn
off as a matter of fact. Some where using it as a convenient place
for a nitrous break while they waited for the tow truck. Got to the
site at Snow Valley and saw basically what you would expect of a
mega rave held at an empty ski resort. Though well intentioned, the
site turned out to be a bit of a pain in the ass. Ski slopes,
during the summer months, are basically big sandboxes. The whole
fucking thing is sand, sand, and more sand. And what do we get when
we cross a couple thousand ravers dancing and dragging their feet?
We get dust, dust, and more fucking dust. Dust everywhere. It was a
task to breathe at times. Those hardcore kids with the breathing
filters were very popular that day. By dusk it looked like hardcore
heavenn with all the filters and bandanas about. Anyway I went over
to some rocks near some trees (considerably less dusty) and planted
myself down next to my girl. I had my name tag on for a while but
no one from IDM came up to me and all the ravers seemed to think it
was an invitation to come up and talk to me. Well I was feeling
like fucking hell from having a wicked hangover the night before
and only getting a couple nights sleep and the mountain drive, and
the altitude so the last thing I wanted to do was talk to someone
in their pajamas. I took it off and left it off. The DJ sets were
pretty competent and basically represented the best LA has to
offer. Most of them leaned more toward the acid side of things with
the real standout being Daniel from Moontribe. That boy can spin.
Anyhow on to the live performances: Loop Guru played a fairly tame
set of world music inspired techno. The sort of thing Deep Forrest
might play if they thought they should make a techno record. Oh
well.
Meat Beat Manifesto was quite good and I was really impressed. Not
a pair of leather pants in sight (who knew)? Jack and crew (live
drummer, guitar, etc.) played some wicked trip-hop on the breakbeat
tip and some nice sample heavy techno and topped off the set with
what must have been some of the older stuff, more on the industrial
side. Not bad, and a good video show to boot. The crowd dug it.
Underworld started hard and never let down. They started things out
right with Rowla faded into Cowgirl and then tore shit up with
Pearls Girl. Underworld are really a fantastic live act. Karl Hynde
jumps around the stage like a mad man belting out his stream of
thought lyrics like an angry ape in a trance. Born Slippy got a
nice treatment as well. The only problem was their beats tended to
sound a bit repetitive when played one after another for an hour.
Other than that, brilliant stuff.
After Underworld finished off I ventured close to the stage for the
Chemical Brothers who were out next. This is clearly the band
everyone was here for judging by the audience response (and the
large number of people wearing t-shirts). If you liked the Chemical
Brothers even a little bit this performance would have made you a
hardcore fan. Tom and Ed played about 75% new/unreleased material,
all of it in the same vein as the stuff on Exit Planet Dust, and
some of it really quite wonderful and dark and everyone went crazy
when they came around to the last song. You guessed it, Chemical
Beats. Tom and Ed came back for brief encore of Chemical Beats
mixed with the Beatles Tommorrow Never Knows. What would John
Lennon think? The audience went crazy.
After the Chemical Brothers finished things up about a third of the
people left. The reason? It gets fucking cold in the mountains at
night. In OC and LA if it's in the seventies every day and when it
dips to around 65 people start saying "lets light the fireplace!"
However, the temperature was in the mid-thirties and it was too
much for many to take. Hell, it was too much for me to take but
there was no way I was missing Orbital. They had their own three
video screen set up synchronized to the songs. Falling clocks,
tumbling shapes, floating household goods, a person doing sign
language, spinning squigles (like the web page graphics)...fucking
wicked. Orbital started out (yes, the headlight glass are still in
effect, with added laser) with both versions of Out There Somewhere
from In-sides, played basically note for note like the album
version. Next was an fantastic updated version of Choice from
Orbital 1. Orbital also played Girl With the Sun in Her Hair, a
cracking version of Satan, a couple of the Lush tracks off Orbital
2, two version of The Box, PETROL, and capped things off with
Halcyon On+On (not just Halcyon as they typically play live), which
included the infamous Belinda C. sample. Orbital waved good-bye
told us it was "brilliant, thanks alot," and left leaving us
wanting more. Everyone assumed they'd come back for encore, and
they probably were supposed to (no Chime?) but by the time Orbital
left the stage it was around 3am and everything was running quite
late.
Well I'd had my fill and I'd seen the Orb just last year and with
my toes tingling with fostbite me and my mates headed over to the
motel to crash. Fucking great event but next year its going to take
RDJ to get me up in those damn mountains again.
Peace out. Now I'm gonna go pass out.
/""''
/"'RESH
Live and Direct from the G-Spot
Orange County, California, USA