Guest dovla Posted June 17, 2003 Share Posted June 17, 2003 Before I start this review I would like to state that this is the first party review that I'm writing in english before writing it in Croatian (you will excuse my grammar mistakes), this is because I feel that this message needs to reach as much people as possible. about 3 months ago I first got the info about this festival, naturaly it came as a big surprise coz no one ever made such a big festival in this area, it also seemed wierd that the organiser didn't contact us at all, and when I say us I mean the people who are working on this scene and making parties. The scene in croatia is really small, about 150 people gather about two times a month on a small trance party in Zagreb, but we still know some stuff about where to make a party and where not to. This is one thing I want to really make perfectly clear. The organisers were not people from croatia! They were mostly Italian and they only took some local people to work at the festival. Their first idea was to make a festival on the south of croatia on the island brac. Which wasn't such a bad idea but they changed the location to the krka national park which was more to the north of croatia. The first logical question you have to ask yourself here is how can someone just throw a festival in a national park while we who work on the scene can't throw a small open air party in the zagreb mountains because of the police. So we got in contact with the main organiser and she came to Zagreb to meet us. By this time the lineup was almost closed. The organiser seemed like a nice person, she showed us the festival program on her computer and we talked a bit about our scene. One thing that bothered us after this conversation was that the location pictures on her presentation were pictures from the national park while she said that the location itself is near to it and not in the park. She also told us that she managed to make this festival there because she is working together with the local people from skradin(the town near the festival). The day after that I got a call from her to go and meet again with her and this man from skradin who is helping with the organisation. We met for a drink and after this drink my every instict told me that the festival will be a disaster. This guy was clearly an idiot. He kept telling me how he will make this scene a giant one and how he know everything about such festivals. Now consider how would you react is someone who lives in a small place without any content till yesterday didn't know anything about this scene and it's music is telling you today how he will change it and how he knows what needs to be done to make a good festival. But for what it was worth I was glad that they accepted us as artists to play there and to let us help with the promotion. Anyway after I got the flyer and saw the website it was an even bigger shock. The flyer was terrible, there were tons of grammar mistakes and the design was really poor, the same thing could be said about the web page. But anyway I was still glad that something was about to happen here. Then a month before the festival I got a mail from some site that was also promoting the festival and they sent a link for the pictures of the festival location. The location was a barren plain with no shades, no trees, it looked like a desert. I sent a mail to the organiser to send me pictures of the location to see if this really was true, but she sent me pictures of the national park again. From all of this it was very easy to assume that the organisation was really bad, that they didn't plan everything like they should have, but again, we were just overwhelmed that someone was going to make a festival here and that we were going to play there and meet some of this scene's influential people. So the date came and we packed our stuff and travelled for about 5 hours to the festival. I travelled with 3 other people and 2 dogs in the car so it wasn't really a comfortable experience. When we got near skradin we had a lot of trouble finding the location and we're from Croatia so we understood each road sign. When we finally got there it was already dark and it really looked fantastic. Whe met up with our friends from shuma who came there a day earlier and told us that it's really hot during the day. Anywayz the main stage had this really huge decoration made up of really thin sheets, similar to those that were on the samothraki chill out floor, only much much bigger, there was also a small tower in front of the main stage that was also similar to the one from samothraki. And all the way around it were little towers that were connected to it with this really cool flourescent fabric. We later found out that they were supposed to make this really huge sun shade over the entire place but the guy who was supposed to make it fucked them up. The chill out floor was very simple so I won't describe it in detail, it just had some nice fluo decos. There were about 10-15 shops all together(instead of the annouced 30) and most of the stuff they had was food, which was good coz skradin was about 10 kilometers away and you couldn't get there without a car. After I finished touring the entire place I put my tent up I learned that 3 live acts were canceled, etnica, deep dive corporation and dogma 3000. Also after touring around a bit I saw that there were only about 300-500 people around and the expected amount 2 months ago was 5000. Because of this 6-7 live acts and around 20 djs were canceled!! The timetable was completly screwed, the sprinkling was canceled, the video screen wasn't big at all, no internet point, no shade for camping and the bus from skradin didn't drive in regular trips. The first person to play on the main floor was shiva, a dj from croatia, I didn't like his style much but after not being on an open air party since samothraki...this was like a revelation. I really missed stomping on the grass under the light of the moon. The crowd was also great. Even though the entire festival had really few people, those who came had a really great time. There were lots of people from israel, a bit from japan, england and hungary. After a bit of stomping I came to my tent and I met the guys from species and a friend of theirs who I also met @ samothraki. They played their live later on in the evening but I was too tired from our trip and had to rest. I learned that I was playing on the chill out @ 6 in the morning and had to get some rest. It also sucked that S>Range was doing a live in that time on the main floor and I was going to miss it. But since this was the first time I got a chance to play on such a festival I decided to give it the best I have and I played from 6 till 9...for nobody, there were about 50 people on the main floor listening to S>Range and maybe a couple of people just passed through the chill out floor. But it didn't matter to me, I came there to play and I did if for no one else then for myself. A friend played on the chill after me and then It started to get really hot so we went to the beach for a swim, the closest beach was about 40 kilometars away(not the river krka but the real sea) and stayed there for the entire day. We decided that it was best to this every day, the heat at the festival was simply too much to stand. After a day of chillin on the beach we came back just to hear dirty frank from chaishop play. This was for me maybe one of the best moments of the festival. There were around 10 people on the floor, the sun was setting and Frank was fantastic! He played mostly progressive but really deep and mellow. It was perfect for the sunset, and he didn't care that there were only 10 people listening to his set, he kept a smile on his face and played a fantastic set. Big up to the guy, I later learned that he had two big cd cases which were all filled only with original cds. After him Genetic Spin came up to play a live act. For me this was the best live on the festival. Great style and ideas, really interesting progressive sounds with lots of tribal and melodic parts, it was also perfect timing coz it wasn't hot anymore. The chill out floor was closed almost all the time. No one played there coz there were no people. After a while we met the guys from genetic spin and talked a lot, in the evening cymoon from psytrance.cz played a fantastic set, his set was a full on one but without the hit stuff like gms and atomic pulse, it was really psychedelic music and he kept it this way from the beginning till the end. A fantastic story and fantastic mixing. Big up mate! But after a while I was too tired and went to bed. The next day I woke up just to hear my friends, shuma, perform their live, it was a great live as usual, it's too bad they can't get better equipment for their live, they brought their desktop computer coz they don't have a laptop just to make it more of a live act. And I think they really did an awesome job, since I have some of their tracks I know how much they changed them for the live act. After they finished there were no foreign djs available to play so a friend of ours played back to back with aki from species. This was also a great moment in the festival. Even though it was hot as hell there were aroud 6-7 of us up on the stage just having fun and listening to our local djs play. After a while Aki continued to play by himself and he was the last person to play on the main floor sound system. In the meantime the fire truck came and sprayed us with water, it was nice and of course, reminded me of samothraki. Michael from Genetic Spin put on one of their unreleased tracks to check its quality and that was the last track there. After that we took Michael and Simon with us to see the beaches, that's why most of the people came here after all, if you talked to anyone most people would tell you something like...why are we here in the middle of the desert when there are beautifull beaches 40 kilometers away? Anyway after we got back from our swim the main floor had moved to the chill out floor. It now looked like an everyday party, but at least it seemed more apropriate coz it was filled up. I think that night Pena from Flow records came to play and he was also fantastic, He started with progressive but just kept going up, to full on and then after a while to really dark and powerfull tech trance, but I got really tired real fast from the swimming and went to sleep. The next day I woke up to find out that I overslept phony orphants live and antix live which really pissed me off coz I really couldn't know when they were supposed to play. I wanted to go and take a shower but the showers weren't working anymore, we decided to go and visit the waterfalls today and again took Michael and Simon from Genetic Spin with us. When we came back I think avi nini from domo records was playing, he had a great full on set as well. This is as much as I can remember from the music. I also remember hearing Faktor D but someone before them played full on so they didn't blend in as nicely. The music ended on monday afternoon with Marcus from Interzone playing a great progressive set and us taking what was left of the water and preparing to leave. We dropped of Marcus and Simon in a hotel in Skradin and went for another short swim and went home. So in the end I'd like to say that it's very difficult to have a general opinion about this festival, for us who had free drinks all the time and didn't have to pay an entry ticket it didn't matter much if we'd hear everything and see everything that was announced. But again, there were some people who wanted to see GMS live for instance and travelled a great deal. These people were robbed. But then again the majority of people still looked like they don't care who's playing as long as it's good music. This is why most of the people really had a great time. My mood changed a lot, sometimes I heard that a live act would be canceled and I thought, fuck it all, I want to go home ASAP, but then it just took one great track from any DJ and I would feel great again. But in the end I can say that we had a great time. But I have one final thing to say to all the people that were dissapointed... The major flaws of this organisation were that they took local people from Skradin to work at the festival. This perhaps sounds wierd but you have to understand that such small places on the adriatic cost are filled with people who don't have anything to do the entire year, these people live off turism, they earn enough money from the tourist season to live for the entire year. So they know how to rob people and do nothing. After you don't do anything for a year you get lazy. That's what happens with them, so they simply don't do what you ask and pay them to do. This is why there was no big shade on the main floor, this is why the showers weren't working the entire time and stuff like that. There were many more big mistakes made but overall the biggest problem maybe the fact that the main organiser doesn't speak very good english, it's common for Italian folk to think their language is the only one on the planet. I don't know how much this has helped you to understand that our organisers don't have anything to do with this and that we are capable of doing a festival without all these problems. So I will state once again that Croatian people were not the organisers of this festival. We are however making another festival in august and we will try to make it at least 10 times better. So I hope that I will see some of you there. Here's a topic about it http://forum.isratrance.com/viewtopic.php?...17258&forum=7&0 Bom! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Lunar Posted June 17, 2003 Share Posted June 17, 2003 No etnica or Max Lanfranconi???? i thought they were hosting the party.. suxx Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest dovla Posted June 17, 2003 Share Posted June 17, 2003 yes, can you imagine...etnicanet was involved in the organization of the festival and already on the first day we found out that they wouldn't show up....and they were supposed to bring some equipment for the guys from species and their live...so species had some problems with their live... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Rodolfo Posted June 18, 2003 Share Posted June 18, 2003 ...and what's about all the artists left home from the organization? no flight tickets, no money for the artists performances, but still 60 EUR at the entry, right? I hope they finally learned something Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest krize Posted June 18, 2003 Share Posted June 18, 2003 nice review man , sorry about the bad stuff .. (((( Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest dovla Posted June 18, 2003 Share Posted June 18, 2003 the ticket price didn't change at all even though half of the artists weren't there...it was around 90 euro at the entrance I think...our friends from genetic spin had a flight booked back on tuesday and on monday they closed the festival and took down all the stages so they had to take a hotel in the town....really bad stuff...but like I said, for those of us who had free tickets and free drinks this was really a fantastic experience, but for someone who came from far away and lost tons of money just to hear gms or bamboo forest live it was of course very dissapointing Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest dovla Posted June 18, 2003 Share Posted June 18, 2003 oh and just to mention that the ticket price for local people was changed a day before the festival to 25 euro but no one knew that, if people knew that before they would have come Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest cymoon Posted June 18, 2003 Share Posted June 18, 2003 I think the price was also going down each day of the festival.... pics from the location: http://www.psytrance.cz/clanek.php3?ret=in...in&pos=1&id=419 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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