Anyone who has ever tried organizing a large-scale musical event in Poland that is not of a commercial nature knows how daunting of a task it really is. The promoters behind the 3rd edition of the Audioriver festival worked on the party in a group of no more than 4 people long before it actually commenced.
Plock is the 3rd richest city in Poland, which is something that can be noticed immediately after entering the old market. While there, you will find posters with the list of events that took place in July, along with those that are yet to take place in August. The city schedule of musical events will make any tourist feel envious. Jazz, rock, reggae and finally electronic music have all found their home in Plock thanks to the city's very open minded authorities.
Stairway to heaven
The festival venue is a picturesque bank on the Vistula River, or, actually, it’s a beach that can be accessed by a long but fortunately not too steep stairway. A short glance from the top at the surrounded by tents and slowly coming to life main stage slowly filling up with fans of music makes quite a snug impression on its own. The next morning, I was feeling slightly different when I had to climb the stairs back up, but that challenge only appeared to be more difficult than it actually was. Downstairs, the atmosphere was totally beachy. From the speakers of the centrally located Main Stage, which on Friday was ruled by drum’n’bass, you could already hear the sipping sounds of rehearsals and instrument checks. Every step you made was followed by a plume of sand coming out of your sneakers, flip-flops or even bare feet. After a few minutes, you could feel sand everywhere. That setting formed the background to my walk in the direction of the Circus Stage, which, after I had studied the line-up, I decided would not be left by myself, unless, of course, urgent needs arose.
Veritable circus
The first foreign star at the Circus Stage was Martin Buttrich, but already the earlier gigs from the duets 3 Channels and Hagal vs. Petter Von Coil had gathered a substantial group of dancers in the tent. Buttrich, the artist behind the sock of releases from Loco Dice and Timo Maas, did a good job of getting a considerable amount of fresh energy out of his already well know tracks. Well, enough to get the energy level up in the tent at least. Next, the controls were given to Agoria who had secured himself a spot in the line-up with the great compilation 'At the Controls'. The Frenchman flew over the party like a squadron of fighters, at the same time proving that he's equally good in the studio as he is behind the decks.
Yet the first sounds of Josh Wink, Agoria's replacement, completely changed the character of the event. The tent was then filled up with aggressive hats that are characteristic of techno music and therefore he made it clear to everyone who was looking for pumping and catchy melodies that they should now take a two hour long break. For fans of true techno, Wink's set appeared to be the brightest show of the festival. Loco Dice, who played right after Josh, at first fit himself into the massive tunes that his predecessor had played, to finally make a transition into the slightly lighter regions of minimal, in which he feels much more comfortable. Dice's set, particularly its second part, became, however, too schematic to make me stay there till the end.
A fountain and pigeons - 3 stars in Plock.
The very successful first night was already behind me. In front of me, there was a Saturday morning and those god damn stairs. At that point in time, I couldn't have known about my biggest struggle of that morning – the temperature in my hotel room, pigeons flapping outside my window and the lapping fountain in the yard. After all, I was very lucky that I didn't have to take care of bed hunting myself. The number of beds offered by the city was not even close to half the demand generated by 10 thousand people visiting Audioriver. The event's organisers had tried to secure additional accommodation at schools, dormitories and at a provisional camping site which was placed right next to the Circus Stage. Nevertheless, all that effort appeared to be insufficient. It seems that the lack of accommodation efficiently scared away lots of potential guests.
Never trust Pete Tong
Saturday was to be the night of the Shaman – that's how most of the people in Poland call the Chilean-born minimalist, Ricardo Villalobos. By the way, I think it's worth mentioning that his last name should be pronounced the way it is in Spanish, namely, "veeya-lobos". All of you who were looking up to Pete Tong's infamous talent of mispronouncing foreign names have yet again been raised to the bait.
Secure your tents!
Before the next evening finally started, the festival's crew did their utmost to help the bands at their sound checks, and at the same time prayed for good weather. And the forecast wasn't too promising. A gale over Warsaw became the reason for many aircrafts to change their destination airport, and the storm was approaching Plock. That posed real threat to tents that had been pitched on the temporary camping site. The organisers should be praised for sending a warning to the campers, as should the storm for passing by the city. Admittedly, it rained for a while, but apart from a slight delay on the main stage, nothing serious really happened. Talking about delays, there's some sort of responsibility lying with the Red Bull company too, as their London Air Race Show was accountable for delaying all flights from Heathrow by 2 hours. But at the end of the day, all foreign guests managed to make it to Plock.
Who is going to top Lazarus?
I greeted the evening in the tent of the Circus Stage but, as contrasted with the previous day, I managed to go out to do some sightseeing too. Cube filled the bill by playing very decent tech and deep house, but I hadn’t expected the kind of powerful and dynamic set from Fresh that I heard. With his mix, he proved himself to be a wide-ranging DJ who is able to play house, tech house and minimal with equal feeling.
The next artist to show up on the stage was a DJ whose name itself triggers tons of emotions. To all fans of 'The Omen' movie, the name Damian brings about unambiguous associations. The last name Lazarus belonged in turn to a friend of Jesus (the one who died to be later resurrected). I'm not sure whether that collation in particular is responsible for Lazarus' musical wackiness, or rather the fact that he always has his eyes and ears wide open to new streams in electronic music. His set was very energetic but also melodic, thanks to which the two hours of music elapsed as quick as the blink of an eye.
Sightseeing and yammer
It was enough to leave the tent for a moment to find out about the fact that only the musical side of the festival was fully buttoned up. Backup facilities, namely toilets and catering, had not been duly taken care of. The smell coming out of portable WCs was so intensive that you would give them a wide berth. Woe to the ones who had to inhale the stench while queuing up for a dozen or so minutes to finally go inside and faint. Lines to the barbecue with sausages, black pudding and steaks were even longer, but if you had dreamed about something vegetarian, you could have ended up eating bread and mustard. The price phenomenon is another thing which I'm not able to figure out while visiting Poland (I've been living in Germany for several years now). A steak in Frankfurt is twice as big and almost twice as cheap!
Chillout-killout and girls in red
The decoration, hostesses and lights in the Red Tent could only grab the attention of ogres, which is something that actually worked pretty well. I'm not trying to say that there was something wrong with the girls, but the colourful lights, lasers and Polish rednecks (who are an indelible element of every open air event in the country) immediately made me think of the need to split.
The chillout was sometimes actually a chillout, while at others it was a killout. A great thing was the wooden floor in the tent on which you could finally take a rest from walking and dancing on sand; and the very comfortable seats from where you could enjoy watching both the DJ booth and photo sessions with the clubbers. On the Saturday night, the tent was undeniably ruled by Poziom-X who mixed ambient, downtempo and deep house for 4 hours. Bshosa & Eli in turn saluted to the rule "no matter where, it has to be minimal" and so they played minimal in the chillout tent.
Having passed the Main Stage, I was already enough disgusted to decide to go back to the Circus. At the time, Electricity was trying to deface the festival of ambitious electronic music by transforming it into a beach club. Bert, Igor and 'Sunglasses at Night' should have all better stayed at home.
Enough yelling. The Circus Stage was the place for me. And in the tent, two amazing live acts delivered by the Israeli artist Guy Gerber and the German duo Extrawelt sharpened the appetite for Villalobos even more.
I don’t jump around
That’s how Ricardo explains himself. He doesn’t make a big show, but if you watch his totally natural catwalk accompanied by coquettish, penetrating glances you will find an artist with passion. He mixed records for 4 hours without doing anything at a push. He played as he liked it and enjoyed his time behind the decks. With the set, in which he combined endless minimal loops, tech house tracks and Latin songs, he enchanted, I think, everyone. There was room for amazing forthcoming tracks, like ‘Trumpet’ from SiS and also for dance music classics like ‘The Age of Love’. The crowd bid farewell to him when he left the venue as if he were a star, which he obviously fully deserved.
See you next year!
All the small-scale organizational defects were fully compensated by the artists’ performances. In the musical aspect, Audioriver 2008 stood at a very high European level, and in Poland I’m sure there’s no equal event of the same calibre. I must admit that I don’t visit Poland too often, due to the lack of sufficient excuse, but I’m sure I’ll be showing up at the festival in Plock every year from now on.
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