From: marita
Date: Mon, 29 Sep 1997 13:13:24 +0000
To: 604@party.net, 604nl@trance.org
Subject: absurd review

okay, got a bit of time on my hands, so i thought i'd do a quick review of last friday night at the absurd party in nijmegen....

we drove down from amsterdam, and got there around 1 or so i think. first problem.... nearly broke my neck just trying to walk down the stairs to the dance floor / bar / dj area cuz of the ridiculous amount of strobe that was being flashed. =o) but that's typical for me....

first impressions: "uhh.... is this guy on the lighting desk serious???" don't know what he was on, but he fucked around with the stobe light *constantly*. it was way too much. at times he turned it up so fast, that it was like dancing in white sunlight. then of course, he'd pump in loads of smoke onto an already small dance floor, so everyone had squinty eyes from the strobe, and dry throats from the smoke. and he was having a *wonderful* time! sad. ;o)

first dj was alrightish. he played a very well known track selection, and that was okay, if only he'd played at least one track fully. but he didn't, he'd play 3 or 4 minutes of each track and then launch into something else.

the crowd / atmosphere was very disco-y. and for some reason, no matter where i moved to on the dance floor, i managed to get close to someone that danced with their elbows held up at right angles from their body. so just you *dare* get into the music! you were suddenly snapped out of it again with a dig in the head, or in the tit, depending on how tall you and / or the offender is. =o))

and i also don't know how i manage it, but i ended up beside the only mr clappy that was there that night. that was bad enough, but what was worse was that he had no sense of timing, and insisted in clapping and whooping completely out of synch with the music. i know it sounds like i was having an awful time, but i wasn't actually. i was giggling my head off. i was thinking 'do these things *only* happen to me???' =o))

anyway, when matt started to dj, it really sorted the men from the boys as they say. some bloody serious stuff was pumped out on the speakers, and a few of the drunks that were there, left the dancing to the people that were there to dance rather than pose and / or pick someone up. .....the barbie's and ken's got down off the tables that they were strutting on at that point as well.... =o))

matt played a brill set as usual, and i would've been on the floor more if the smoke and strobe hadn't taken so much of my energy away already. pity really, he played some great stuff, and i did my best, and actually, the guy that was on the lights at that point did control his strobe urge quite well. but whether it was a mixture of atmosphere, heat, having worked 40 hours during the week already, or what, my energy level was low. =o( great set though matt! =o)

remko and i had to do a bit of giggling at the back drop that was behind the dj's though..... the design itself was quite okay, and when you studied it, there was even one of the elephants with the long spindly legs from salvidor dali's temptation of st. anthony in there, really good, but....

this person had taken the expression 'if you're going to make your own backdrop, just drag out one of your old sheets....' quite literally! to the point that the elastic that makes your sheets fit very neatly around your mattress was still in there!! mind you, the creator was probably so proud of his/her creation, that they brought it home and slept on it as well! =o))

avi came on after matt, and he played quite well, but we were wrecked and left quite shortly after he started. (went looking for you guys before we left, but couldn't spot you anywhere...)

anyway, to sum it up, we had quite an okay night. i think with this venue, it can possibly only get better. i don't think nijmegen has totally grasped the idea of psychedelic trance just yet, and how it differs to normal disco house / techno music, but they're getting there.

okay, got to dash. this turned out longer than i'd intended, but i do get carried away sometimes. =)

have a good week everyone,

=o) marita.

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noone can be uncheered with a balloon....
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Date: Mon, 29 Sep 1997 23:39:02 +0200 (MET DST)
From: Joris Favie
To: marita
Cc: 604nl@trance.org
Subject: Re: absurd review

On Mon, 29 Sep 1997, marita wrote:

> okay, got a bit of time on my hands, so i thought i'd do a quick
> review of last friday night at the absurd party in nijmegen....
>
> we drove down from amsterdam, and got there around 1 or so i think.

> first problem.... nearly broke my neck just trying to walk down the
> stairs to the dance floor / bar / dj area cuz of the ridiculous
> amount of strobe that was being flashed. =o) but that's typical for
> me....

Haha, I nearly crashed down the stairs when I first got in, too.

> first impressions: "uhh.... is this guy on the lighting desk
> serious???" don't know what he was on, but he fucked around with the
> stobe light *constantly*. it was way too much. at times he turned
> it up so fast, that it was like dancing in white sunlight. then of
> course, he'd pump in loads of smoke onto an already small dance
> floor, so everyone had squinty eyes from the strobe, and dry throats
> from the smoke. and he was having a *wonderful* time! sad. ;o)

I personally really like strobes and smoke... it helps to get me into trance. I still do think that the dancefloor was too bright most of the time, though (I also like to dance in the dark).

> first dj was alrightish. he played a very well known track
> selection, and that was okay, if only he'd played at least one track
> fully. but he didn't, he'd play 3 or 4 minutes of each track and
> then launch into something else.

This was Minddreamer, and I liked his set. His mixing skills are very good, but I liked his track selection at the previous Absurd party better. He started out with some weirder stuff (I got there at 23:30 I think), and I think it was a bit too much at such an early time. He definately did play some great tracks, but I liked Matt's and Avi's sets better this night. The last track Minddreamer played was a real killer, though.

> the crowd / atmosphere was very disco-y. and for some reason, no

Yeah I think there were a lot of people that frequent this club when there are club/mellow house nights - a very mixed crowd indeed.

> matter where i moved to on the dance floor, i managed to get close to
> someone that danced with their elbows held up at right angles from
> their body. so just you *dare* get into the music! you were
> suddenly snapped out of it again with a dig in the head, or in the
> tit, depending on how tall you and / or the offender is. =o))

Hm, I had no problems with people poking their elbows at me, but I agree that it's hard to get into the music when you're surrounded with posers who don't want to loose their cool.

> and i also don't know how i manage it, but i ended up beside the
> only mr clappy that was there that night. that was bad enough, but
> what was worse was that he had no sense of timing, and insisted in
> clapping and whooping completely out of synch with the music. i know
> it sounds like i was having an awful time, but i wasn't actually. i
> was giggling my head off. i was thinking 'do these things *only*
> happen to me???'

=o)) You could of course start dancing somewhere else away from mr. clappy...

> anyway, when matt started to dj, it really sorted the men from the
> boys as they say. some bloody serious stuff was pumped out on the
> speakers, and a few of the drunks that were there, left the dancing
> to the people that were there to dance rather than pose and / or pick
> someone up. .....the barbie's and ken's got down off the tables
> that they were strutting on at that point as well....=o))

Yes it was funny to see some girls desperately trying to get some attention... and failed because most of the mellow boys had already left.

> matt played a brill set as usual, and i would've been on the floor
> more if the smoke and strobe hadn't taken so much of my energy away
> already. pity really, he played some great stuff, and i did my
> best, and actually, the guy that was on the lights at that point did
> control his strobe urge quite well. but whether it was a mixture of
> atmosphere, heat, having worked 40 hours during the week already, or
> what, my energy level was low. =o( great set though matt! =o)

He definately had the best tracks but Minddreamer and Avi had better mixing skills - I don't know if Matt played things from DAT though, which could explain this. He played a lot of tracks that totally blew my mind though, hard and full on the way I like it. Definately the best set of the night.

> avi came on after matt, and he played quite well, but we were wrecked
> and left quite shortly after he started.

Avi started out with some softer and weirder stuff (very well mixed though), but started playing some great harder tracks later on and the last half hour of his set was quite mindblowing. I wouldn't mind having a list of the tracks you played then, Avi :)

Before this final half hour of total brainwash Avi's set was a bit monotonous and not as hard as I like it, but that's quite understandable if you're spinning for 3 full hours. I think this was a bit too long, also for Minddreamer and Matt, they had to play some less impressive tracks as well to fill their sets I think.

> (went looking for you guys before we left, but couldn't spot you
> anywhere...)

I was wearing my trusty old Roland tr-909 T-shirt as usual, but I have no idea what the rest of you look like...

> anyway, to sum it up, we had quite an okay night.

I had a great time because of the great music - the crowd could have been better but the organizers couldn't help this.

> i think with this venue, it can possibly only get better. i don't think
> nijmegen has totally grasped the idea of psychedelic trance just yet,
> and how it differs to normal disco house / techno music, but they're
> getting there.

Well I live in Rotterdam, much bigger than Nijmegen, and there are absolutely no interesting clubs or parties whatsoever... I'm used to just listening to records at home, so I'm pleased with any opportunity to hear great psy trance on a big PA.

Joris.

From: "ABsurd prod."
To: 604nl@trance.org
Cc: 604@party.net
Subject: [GOA] ABsurd's report about IntoXicated

Hi all 604nl'rs,

Thanks for all your reports on 604 and 604nl lists, this is how we eXperienced iT:

[tha Place]
Okay, it all started at 9:30 in the evening when we started decorating the place. (Btw, the place we picked because --okay it is a bit tacky normally-- is simply one of the few which allows us to give a party for a couple of hundred people until 8 o'clock in the morning) Everybody (the DJs, light-jockies, and friends -most from A'dam) came in. We met each other, and while the DJs got accustomed to the turn tables (more about this later) we put up the black lights (yes this place normally doesn't have them!?) and our drops. Thanks to one of the DJs for bringing the cool Indonesian ones. (Btw: the Revolution is _not_ disco. It is mixed mellow house/trance)

[Flying Saucers are Goooo]
So, the place opened. About ten people immediately came in and Mind Dreamer started playing. Some of them started dancing, but -of course- the party only started kicking about 12:30 (we are not sure about the time since most of us were in another time/space zone at the moment) with indeed most Ken/Barbie, GOA, and simply fucked-up people filling the dance floor.

[the Dancin' Decoration]
MindDreamer was being his extraordinary-smiling out-of-space hanging-on-the-turntables beast, and the crowd was dancing like hell. I think it was at this point when some of our decoration started to fall down and seemed to move all over the walls, from one place (mostly dance floor) to other places (easily accessible). Somewhere during his tracks the balloon! guys also arrived.

[the STROBO guy]
Btw: Yes, one of the light jockies we hired then kind-of lost control also. Whatever we said, he was incapable of understanding that there was too much strobo on the dance floor. As for the others, well yes -this was no open air party- we use a lot of strobo normally, since our LJs and public seem to like it. However, I do not think we will have him again. He is just too ..uhm.. unstable ;-).

[Yeah!]
Anyway, the crowd was sheering away. We were also smiling our heads of :-), and then Matt started playing. The party became more relaxed as the crowd gradually changed into a somewhat more, hmm, experienced public and the other people went into the chill-out to smoke. At that point, our other two LJs kind-of got their act together again, and took over from the STROBO guy. By this time, a somewhat smaller crowd was dancing on Matt's tracks and, for the most of the time, we thought we had a stable -apart from the decoration- situation. It really looked that we could master ourselves/the-situation by then!

[Insanity]
Apparently, the whole night people were coming and going from the other parties, but we think that when Avi started playing that we had the majorly adult/f*cked-up portion of the Nijmegen house scene at that night. However, somewhere, when Avi was trying to introduce a more relaxed atmosphere (it was well over five by this time) our mr. STROBO *sigh* had to take over (there was no stopping this guy). Filling the place with smoke and FIRE (in fact, there were a few who would actually like this, except for a friend of us who had a nice trip, until then) transforming the dancefloor into an asylum for the utterly insane (from which we apparently had quite a few).

[the Quest for the Dime]
Avi *where is my cola?*, was searching for a dime which had to be on the right-hand turn table. (The dime had to be on the right turn table because otherwise the needle would skip) Of course, the dime *where is that f*cking dime* went missing several times (in fact, in search of yet another dime, Avi dumped the contents of one of the LJs wallets all over floor, adding to the -for us- already chaotic situation. Then he gently kicked, the bastard, the stuff in the corner and then he decided to use a quarter. it was SO so SIMPLE:)))))).

[Party... What Party??]
With the majorly f*cked-up on the dance floor, the last of the other parties (these lasted until 6 o'clock) came into a living hell of roaring sounds and mind-erasing light. Half of the decoration was gone by this time *grin* and the place had literally fallen apart. We were having fun like hell -this is the way we like it-, and again managed to get our out-of-his-mind mr. STROBO out of the way for the last hour or so, giving the extra people and our leftovers somewhat more space. (During which the LJs at that point actually had a few papers thrown to them stating `MEER STROBO' (more STROBO)?)

[*Wheep*.. .. ? ..]
Anyway, the party ended, Avi stopped for a few minutes and then played some really-really-really weird (kind of out-of-beat uptime free-style-jazzy trance fusion kind of) music which stopped with a final strange *wheep* sound (some of us are still dreaming of this sound :-) at the end. The ultimately strange thing was that there was actually somebody, out of his mind, who found! the beat and was dancing onto this track really well? (Maybe it was mister clappy *grin*). To finish, yes again it was ?different? but we, and a lot of other people, had loads of fun (btw: we like it when even Kens, Barbies, Whatevers have fun). Maybe this wasn't what some of you expected, but this is the way we do it. Although, we agree on the STROBO guy -we will certainly not ask him again!-, but for us he even kind of ..hmmm... fitted into our ABsurd party atmosphere.

PS:
We understand that some of you are (as are some of us) more used to open air, free parties. However, we plan our own open airs starting from somewhere in the end of April, which will certainly be more relaxed. Until this time we will continue to give our somewhat ?different? ABsurd parties (did somebody see the ladder which was constantly on the dance floor on the previous party?) at various locations (Next one probably will be a kind-of chill after-party from 4 to 10 in a squat)

PPS:
The owner of the club decided to buy black-lights, and wants us back. (*yeah.. right*, someday maybe)

PPPS:
Dear Matt, when you are going to record the sets, please, please, do not forget to unset the pause button ;-).

See you around,
Saltarelo @ ABsurd