The annual Just Do It! outdoor techno festival (now called Just) took place this past weekend and as usual it was absolutely fantastic. There is nothing finer than being up in the mountains of Saitama, on the river, deep in a cool valley in early summer listening to great music on a lovingly crafted, crystal clear homemade sound system and sharing it with a few wonderful people there just for the love of it.
The DJ line up before me was a perfect flow of styles culminating in a live drum show by Drumno, three live drummers rocking it out in real time in the middle of the campsite on acoustic drums and filling the night air with their intense and energetic show.
They set a perfect tone for my set which, though there were a few technical glitches and timing errors, nevertheless rocked and rolled.
This set is decidedly schizophrenic and meanders all over the place, deep and dark in places, melodic, synthetic and light in others. I also added a few tracks from my tribal alter ego “Amazoku” towards the end and polished it off with my first attempt at a vocal track “Sooner or Later” an up and coming release on Greta Cottage Workshop scheduled for later in the year.
After me the sublime DJ Wang Gung took over from me and kept the flow moving deftly into the very interesting live electronic music of Computer Soup. Armed with a muted trumpet, a sine wave generating oscilloscope and a laptop the guys really came out with some tasty sonic treats – and that is when I collapsed into my tent and floated off into the warmth of the supersonic bass.
I really love doing this party and I’m so pleased to be involved every year. The sound is so good that no matter where you are in the camp site you can hear and feel the music as if you are listening to it on a stereo at home, yet not once is it overwhelming or intrusive. From inside the tent it’s so relaxing to lie back and listen to tunes and on the dance floor it’s thumping enough to feel in your bones, yet there is no need to shout to be heard, the perfect balance.
Speaking of tents, a big thanks also to Sarah, The Tsunami Devil, for showing us the ropes, literally. Camping without you would’ve been a tangled, exposed mess. Big hugs and kisses to you. Without you around I think we’d still be somewhere in the mountains trying to collapse the tent and roll up the sleeping mats.
Also thanks to Yosuke and friends for coming out very year and making a big noise during my set, your presence and energy are deeply appreciated.
And last but not least everyone who came together to do the party, real techno spirit.
■LIVE■
SHANE BERRY
DRUMNO
COMPUTER SOUP
■DJz■
THE KLO (potekoi disco)
TANGO (methane)
WANG-GUNG (void)
TEO (from seoul)
Just a quick note to say thank you to one and all who made it out to the mountains in Chichibu this past weekend.
I will do a more in depth recap later in the week after I have collected photos and videos from various people, and of course I will upload a recorded version of the live set I did too.
But for now I just want so say that it was truly fantastic and I am deeply grateful for everyone’s support and creativity, an inspiration.
The true techno spirit lives on in the mountains of Chichibu this coming weekend the 17th – 18th of July.
I am thrilled to be playing at the “Just Do It!” outdoor festival again this year and it’s my absolute favorite booking of the year. The Asami Campsite is deep in a valley in the mountains of Chichibu, Saitama, next to a crystal clear river and it is such a refreshing get away from the city.
Once a year the Just Do It! crew haul an audiophile quality, home built audio system across the river and set up for a weekend of galactic grooves and interstellar inspiration.
I have blogged about Blu’s previous works of art here. I absolutely love the sound design and music too, inspiring stuff. I could not find much info about the sound artist, Andrea Martignoni, but here is some more of his work on a different project.
George Carlin played with words like Zeus played with thunderbolts.
In this video, one of my favorite rumblings of his, he asserts that the planet Earth will do just fine without us humans and our overblown sense of self importance.
It’s a sentiment I have long held myself.
Our notions of “saving the planet” are arrogant and misguided. We have not even mastered taking care of one another let alone taking care of the complex eco-bio-cosmological entity we live on and call Earth.
I have often wondered about our true place in the grand scheme of things and how cocky we have become since our over sized frontal lobes started pressing on the rest of our brains.
We cling to the planet like a fungus or, as Bill Hicks so eloquently put it, “a virus with shoes” and we have deluded ourselves into thinking that we exist above and beyond the environments we have created and live in. We remain largely ignorant of the fact that they sculpt us as much as we do them.
Even domesticated pets have most of us beaten into submission, lazing at home all day while we go out hunting for food on their behalf.
The fact that in our own bodies bacteria outnumber our body cells 20 to 1 and that aliens might view us as nothing more than hosts for microbes blows my mind and reminds me of Tom Robbins’ notion that, “Human beings were invented by water as a device for transporting itself from one place to another.” — Tom Robbins (Another Roadside Attraction)
Not to mention the plausibility that we are helpless pawns in corn’s strategy to dominate the world as author Michael Pollan points out in this TED talk.
Our self appointed place at the top of the ecological hierarchy is an intoxicating illusion.
The sobering reality is that 90 percent of all living creatures that have ever lived on Earth are now extinct, irrespective of their ecological social standing, and it is probably safe to say our chances of contributing ourselves to that statistic are very high, but at least we are in the apparently unique position of being able to be aware of this fact.
We are not destroying the planet, we are merely making it unlivable for ourselves and the host of organisms we depend on for survival, but there are other organisms capable of rapid adaptation to these new climates and long after we are gone as a species they will bring about the next generation of planetary ecological systems and the planet, no longer called Earth, will go on and on and on and on and the human shit stain we are leaving behind will gradually be washed away by toxic (to us) rain.
As Kafka once said to Max Brod, “there is hope, just not for us.”
I finished the remix for Classical Wicket on Moph records, and now move on to the next project - a remix of Jeff Bennet's track "Gizmology". 4 days ago
