EarthDance Groningen 2002
Review by Marita

At 10pm, we were some of the first people to arrive at the venue, but it gave us a good chance to have a good look around. first time i've partied in the Simplon in groningen, and it's a really cool place. :) Main dance floor was downstairs - you had to get through 2 massively sound proof doors to get there, i even had to ask for assistance opening them on a couple of occassions when i was trying to get in there while carrying a few drinks. :) chillout with chaishop, and another bar were upstairs. really really comfortable place to have a party. very friendly staff too. :)

Deco (provided by placebo effect, germany), was really beautiful. the main dancefloor was adorned with lots and lots of different sized, shaped, and coloured fluoro fish. twas like dancing in a tropical aquarium. :) Barth (closed eye visuals) provided us with wonderfully dreamy and trippy projections on one full wall. took all my attention many many times. nice one barth! :)

Matt was playing when we got there...he even played some zorba just to watch timo come out in an allergic fluffy rash :P during this, the phantasm slapheads arrived - john phantasm, ben - the other part of mindfield, and dick trevor. :) Junya wandered in shortly afterwards. yay! another redhead. ;)

The place didn't start to fill up until about midnight or 1am though... around which time dick trevor had started to dj. my first time seeing him play at all, and i really enjoyed his dj set, let alone his live set as the bisto boyz. wow! really excellent music! i'm hoping for more tunes from the bisto boyz soon. =)

John Phantasm dj'ed next, and delivered - as per usual - another excellent few hours of full on, banging, well structured, and well mixed music. and he continued on with a live set from mindfield. this is something i've been waiting to experience for 7 or 8 years, and i wasn't disappointed. i couldn't believe it when they played '20,000 worlds in a perspex box'. i never expected to hear that live at all. i'm still getting goosebumps thinking about it. :) completely made my night. =o) it was closely followed by 'valantine's day massacre', and they ended up their set with 'psycho problem'. absolutely brilliant. =o)

The night was brought to a close by Junya Phantasm - who provided us with a fantastic choice of tracks, and spotless mixing. the only problem was that i found the tracks broke down too much and too often for my liking. it cost me my energy a bit, although it probably had something to do with the time of the night too - i was already starting to flag a bit by the end of Mindfield.

Almost forgot about the chillout! We had beautiful music there all night, although the bit i remember most, is when colin from o.o.o.d. was playing close to the end, he was playing a lot of his own music. they've done a track with the 'unconscious collective', a dub track, in which 'squatter and the ant', from 'derek and clive live' (peter cooke and dudley moore), is sampled through the whole track. An absolute classic! i couldn't believe what i was hearing - it's about 10 years since i'd heard derek and clive live, but i recognised sqatter immediately. can't *wait* to get my hands on colin's new stuff. keep an eye and an ear out for it. unconscious collective stuff should hopefully be released in the not too distant future. (fingers crossed 'n' all that) ;)

Overall, we had a super night, so much fun, and the atmosphere there was so friendly. even the people that didn't seem to belong at such a party were also very much enjoying themselves and had huge happy grins on their faces all night. :)
big respect to Matt and Remko for yet another astoundingly successful party. :)
you make it look so easy. ;)

Big shouts go out to Matt and Rem, Bug and Tom, Andy (oops, busted!), Fia, Linda, John, Junya, Dick, Ben, and of course, Timo. :) Yay!

Marita