tossit

Here's one weekend out of the oh-so-exciting life as a DJ.

After a late start and a 12 hour drive through the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland (those mountains are absolutely fantastic in the early morning hours!) we managed to arrive in Milano. A lot of you might have heard of the Italian way of driving and by god, every word is SO true. We got lost in the city and had to fight our way for two hours through an absolutely crazy traffic in order to find the proper place.

When we arrived after 5 o'clock pm, we were overwhelmed by the location, which was situated in a warehouse-kind-of-thing-complex with plenty of space and graffity to cover the walles. It took my mind mind right "back to those days" and the warm welcome by old friends from Vienna and the "locals" did everything to make us feel right at home. They were allready setting up the VJ-Screens and testing the sound in the different halls. Only by looking at the different rooms, one could see that it would be a massive party. I was especially impressed by the Salone (Main) and the Theatro (House) with it's huge soundsystems and screens. After we settled a bit in our sleeping-area, the first beers were openend and we were ready to enjoy our meal. It's amazing how good italians can cook even in big kitchens, they cooked for some 200 people I think, as the pasta they served was very yummie! However that was accompanied by a severe energy-drain, so I went to bed to sleep for an hour, only to be woken up by my girlfriend, a stressed-out Deviouz who was looking for needles and a very weird telephonecall by two people who were playing games with my oh so tired head.

Widely awake now, we immediately grabbed some beer and dived right into where the action was: The DnB-room. Wicked tunes were allready pumping through the speakers and the place began to fill up nicely. The Main-room was an amazing sight: No lights at all, only 5 huge screens with the projections. The word: "trippy" doesn't catch all of it, it was simply great to see and to compare and to fall into the visuals which took you on a trip of their own. My girlfriend and me wandered about through the different rooms, saw a lot of friendly people, met even more friends from Vienna (in fact they rented a bus and came over with 40+ peeps), danced a little bit, chilled a little bit, talked a little bit and had a great time. There were too many DJ & VJs to name a single one, but I remember Moodlex (live-kind-of-thing) bashing in the House-Floor and showing the people what Belgium is made of: good music and great skills. He simply rocked the place and had lots of fun doing it.
Another crew I noticed were the "Melties", a DnB-collective from Vienna, who dropped by with 3 DJs and the associated VJs from Synoptics (Scarab & T-Cut). Since the last time I heard/saw them (at my birthday-party in Maastricht last year), they have evolved a lot and it was a pleasure to see them playing back to back and to experience the perfect teamwork between VJ and DJ.
At 4.30 in the morning I left the place and a totally happy and wasted Deviouz. I think we all were pretty much done.

After having recharged our batteries, we spent the next day looking for a decent toilet (I hate those French-"shit"-holes), eating a big and yummie pizza (again, no pasta/pizza tastes so good as in Italy itself) and shopping for drinks and food. We didn't do any real sightseeing, partly we got up quiet late, partly we enjoyed the graffities and the garden waaay to much. Hmm, or might I just say, we were simply to tired

We started relatively early on the booze again and sat with a group watching "Bowling for Columbine", when our friends from Maastricht showed up. They too where overwhelmed by the location & set-up and after the obligatory tour around, we had some cheerful rounds, while the place started to fill up. At 23.00 h, my nerves really kicked in and it was time to prepare for my set (the usual drill: getting the records, getting a stock of drinks, going to the loo, etc...).
My predecessor played some DnB, so I decided to start with an Intro and bang it away. Hm, Banging I did, but not so much the floor, but more on the mixer out of frustration. No fiddling around with the knobs, made a channel fall out; no decent prelistening function, one could always hear the main-out in the Headphones; no decent monitoring, as the monitors had a delay on them and the sound kept bouncing from everywhere because of the huge hall. It took me some time to cope with the circumstances and in the end, I guess I managed allright. It was simply an amazing sight, playing in front of the huge screens, watching people "glowsticking", shouting and having a good time. Sometimes I think that we DJs are way to critic concerning our quest for perfect beatmatching and technical tricks, because no-one really seemed to care.
When Deviouz took over the decks, he somehow handled the mixer waaay better than me. He played a nice rocking set with lots of scratches and clearly enjoyed himself totally and so did the crowd. Big thumbs up Mister (btw, you are caught on video!). When he was finished, I just gave me some of the "Acid-Tekkno", which the guy after him played, but I soon joined my friends from Maastricht.
We continued in the Italian room (I guess), who played some live detroit/deep-techno with bashing visuals. Great to see and great to hear, unfortunately I don't know their names, as it seemed one huge collective, jamming and swapping around all the time.
The ladies wanted to continue in the smaller DnB-room where the Melt-DJs played. They had no lights in the DJ-Booth and as they were with three people, one of them had to hold a torch. They too swapped around all the time, the one who played a record had to hold the flashlight, so that the other could dig in his record-box, while the third one was doing the mixing. It was funny to see and it didn't bother them at all. We were all shaking and jumping and sweating to their music. Even a friend of mine, a total techno-head, had great fun. I think he and his wife had the party of a life-time and felt like 15 years younger. Actually a lot of us had the party of a life-time (at least for me, this one is among the top 5 parties).

The rest gets a bit blurry, I only remember lying in bed at 6.30 and listening to the tunes of Face, which was imho more a progressive, nu-energy kind of set, although he claims it to be psy-trance. Bon, that is what you get with putting labels on music. Other countries, other names.

The sunday was the day with the most "personal" contact amongst the artists. I met some very interesting people while chilling in the sun and had nice talks all through the night. The "afterparty" which was planned at first did not take place, but I don't think people bothered. All were tired and happy and full of new inspiration. So it ended up as a kind of "big-chill" all through the sunny sun-day.

On monday we slept a bit, said goodbye to the Austrian people, slept some more and departed in the afternoon. Well that is it more or less.

Again a big thanks to all the people who made that happen. This really was the bomb and will be mentioned in my memoires.
As you can see, I still love to think back at this, though it has been over a year now.

Some pictures can be found here: Contact Europe

Cheerio

Aratiavas

Nice review man. Sounds like a wicked party.

warning

chiaos
I'm interested in this event in Milano,, is it still going for this year??

dynamike

yo, nice one toss!

sounds like a nice event!!!