Toby's journal

Continuing in the abbreviated format..

Good:
Boom festival. So good! Fantastic even! Best festival ever!

Bad - all travel related:
* Outbound flight (TAP Portugal) delayed for more than seven hours.
* Portugese car hire place (Europcar) gave our car to someone else, because we were late. Even though we had paid in advance, and they knew we were gonna be late.
* Running late for the return flight, I somehow managed to end up with my film packed in my checked luggage, and my multi-tool packed in my carry-on luggage. The latter was confiscated at security, but the film bothers me the most. It has almost certainly been ruined, and there won't be any way I can get back all those photos :(
* And of course, this morning I woke up to find this had happened at airports around the UK.

I knew we should have driven..

So, I think I'm almost recovered from Maschinenfest by now.. It was great though.

Highlights from Day One were Iszoloscope and Synapscape, both putting on great live shows. We missed Contaminant and Edgey who were on earlier due to our inability to stop drinking copious amounts of alcohol in the hotel and get down to the venue on time. I saw Architect play, and at least DM appeared to be playing live this time, unlike last time I saw him in Haujobb - although I think his partner was doing most of the work here :)
I had to go back and crash out before Orphx, as I was exhausted. (The others had already gone back earlier.)

On day two I remember Enduser's set being quite good. I hadn't heard anything by Pow[d]er Pussy before, but their set was very danceable, so I did. Caught up with some people for a while, messed around a bit, and got back to the main area in time for Sonar's set, which was excellent. (Second near-disaster - deadpan vanished early in the night, last seen being extremely drunk on account of innumerable kamikaze cocktails, taking the hotel keys with him. Luckily some internal homing beacon guided him the couple of miles back to our hotel, and arrived before us.)

On day three I wasn't looking so good, having had nowhere near enough rest, and far too much intoxication over the previous few days. Reagan, Carrie & I managed to pull ourselves together in the afternoon and got out of the hotel for a combined brunch/dinner in the afternoon, then returned to pick up the others, finish off the last bottle of jaegermeister, and head back to the venue. By the way, I ate an interesting dish that consisted of spaghetti and schnitzel - combined. Also, the Germans are cultured enough to have sour-cream and sweet-chilli sauce served with chips!

Highlights for Sunday were Morgenstern, Imminent and Ah Cama-sotz. With Morgenstern up first, putting on a good set and picking up the pace after the previous lower-energy acts. Imminent was on next. I wasn't really into too much of his new work - however at the end of his set, he played Ire, from the old, brilliant, Nord album. The crowd loved it, and really made sure he came back for an encore! Following on, and finishing up the night, was Ah Cama-Sotz, who did a brilliant job. Not one but two live drummers, and a long and varied set, including two encores.

Head back to the hotel to get try and get some well-deserved rest before checking out in the morning and coming home.

Eventually get up in morning, crawl out of bed, miss train because it's a German public holiday and thus not running on normal Monday schedule. Drink bad railway station latte. Catch actual train half an hour later, fall asleep instantly. Get to Düsseldorf, wake up, get local transit to airport, and then spend forever in queue for security. We went through TWO lots of x-ray machines and metal detectors, and they were searching everybody, even if you didn't set off the machine.
Rest of journey uneventful.

Three weeks ago I went to the Glade festival, from Thursday evening through to Sunday evening.
It was a different experience to last year, when only a few of us had gone to it. This year it felt like almost everyone I knew went, although I didn't seem to run into people as much as I thought. Our own campsite was still quite large in itself, thoguh.
Last year the main dance tent's lineup had looked like a "Best of Warp records" list. This year it was more diverse, and although good, there weren't so many people playing that I was overexcited about. Still, had a good jump about to many of them, including Hexstatic's silliness, Squarepusher, and DJ AFX.
The trance stage had a decent line-up too, and I remember having a good stomp there during friday afternoon in glorious sunshine.

It was hot during the day, and chilly at night, which made it a bit difficult to get any good sleep. A variety of shade structures were built over the three days.

After Glade we all went back to London, I crashed out and finally got a good nights sleep, then spent Monday preparing for the next stage of my holiday..
On Tuesday Carrie & I headed to Luton airport, and flew out to Berlin, where we stayed for a couple of nights, did some sightseeing, drunk metric bier, and generally continued recovering from Glade.

Come Thursday, we caught a series of decreasingly-sized trains to the Voov Experience festival.
The weather on Thursday was atrocious, raining continually, never really stopping, but just alternating between driving and drizzling. We were thoroughly soaked by the time we set the tent up, and it was pretty miserable all round. Things did not look good, until I found some friends, and their converted coach.

This coach was amazing. A 23 year old intercity bus from Devon, they had bought it, taken it to Wales, and spent six weeks working on it. The interior had been stripped, painted, carpeted. Two bunk beds at the back slept four, and the girls had entire wardrobes with them, and two sewing machines! There was a small bar fridge, a four-ring gas oven, a sink with running water, cupboards, seats, and to top it off, they had put some concrete and slate tiles down, and attached a pot-bellied fire for heating. Solar panels were riveted to the roof of the bus, and probably were quite useful as the following few days were very sunny, although not quite as hot as Glade had been. We re-pitched the tent next to the bus. A good landmark, other friends and also some members of psy-forum were able to locate it easily as they arrived.

Sitting in the bus, drying ourselves and our clothes by the fire in this warm bus with (a growing number of) friends and lots of jaegermeister was great. The festival was starting..
The next day was warm, bright and sunny. I created a clothes line and managed to dry out yesterdays clothes and my shoes.

I wandered around the festival during the day; ate nice food, drunk coffee, beer, and so on. Didn't really feel like dancing much come the evening, but we drunk some wine whilst sitting at the chill-out area, and then got some sleep. Which is good, because I didn't get very much more for the rest of the festival..

There are three music stages at Voov: The main stage, the alternative stage, and the chill-out tent. The latter two start up on friday, but the main stage doesn't kick off until ten pm on saturday night. Both stages run all the way through the night and the next day, unlike Glade. The main stage is amazing. More lights, lasers, and strange glowing constructions than you'd beleive. A multitude of red, blue and several green lasers created the effect of being in another world, the sky replaced by a moving grid over your head at times.
I danced a lot on saturday night, firstly at the main stage, and then caught the Australian artist, Sentience, live at 3am, followed by Leung who I had not heard of before, but played a great DJ set.

I managed to catch S-Range playing live on Sunday around midday, and some others, but after 4pm needed to go and have a bit more sleep now that it had cooled down a little bit. Got up a couple of hours later, caught up with people again, and went off for another long dance at the main area. It was nice, but all the psyforum people I'd met, plus the friends from Manchester, seemed to find each other on the dance floor, so there was this big contingent of us, dancing together through the night.

The music ran until 6am on Monday morning, but I was knackered and went to bed after 4, for some well deserved sleep.

Monday was spent slowly packing up and then making our way to Hamburg via a series of trains. We had a few drinks in a strange, tiny, but packed, bar, then crashed out fairly early. We had time to have a quick wander around Hamburg on Tuesday, then caught a flight back to London in the early evening.

Going on holiday with Carrie was nice. It's reminded me of how things were when we were still together though, and I am feeling a bit sad.

Glade was excellent. Voov was fantastic. More to write-up on both, later.

I'm back in London, and spending today relearning how to touchtype, catching up on email (both work and personal), moaning about the crappy weather, and preparing to be shocked at the price of lunch in the City. I'm really looking forward to sleeping in my own bed tonight for the first time in two weeks.
The number of unread LJ entries on my friends'-list is well into four figures, and I have no intention of trying to catch up. If anything important happened, I'm sure you'll mention it in the pub anyway :)

I've ordered two Maschinenfest tickets.
Get yours too now!