BLOC Weekender 2008
Well a week after the event and I feel fully recuperated from several nights of sleep deprivation, beer guzzling, techno grooving and non-dieting.
For those of you who don’t know BLOC is a relatively new annual 3 day dance weekender, mainly focusing on the techno end of the musical scale. No place for knob twiddling introspection (a la ATP), this is 3 days (and basically non-stop) eclectic, hard, danceable music purveyed by some legendary names.
ATP before Christmas was fun, but Aphex Twin was the notable highlight apart from Portishead, so I don’t think its a terrible surprise that I enjoyed this event a lot more. In fact it was greatly reminsicent of the original ATP I went to in 2003 that was curated by Autechre.
Saw too many people to name them all so I guess a quick run down of the highlights and disappointments is due. I thoroughly enjoyed the reformed Red Snapper on the first night, but was left a little cold by Amon Tobin later in the evening. I’m not sure if they put him on in the wrong slot, or he was just playing the wrong tunes, but given how much I like his work it was a little disappointing. I was having fun at the Underground Resistance gig too, despite some of my companions being less than charitable about them – I do admit that there was a little anachronism about it however. I really enjoyed my introduction to two back to back acts on the Saturday – both Sleeparchive and Monolake pushed all the right buttons for me. Of the other ‘big’ names (i.e. ones I have previously heard of ;)) Dave Clarke put on a blinding set (again possibly against expectations of my friends who had been disappointed with him at Sonar previously). Radioactive Man was similiarly excellent. The biggest disappointment was probably the Dexorcist who managed to play a great selection of tunes really badly – I don’t know what went wrong, but he was probably relieved that the fire alarm went off in the middle of the set. I had left at that point, and would have loved to have seen how many people continued dancing on the dancefloor to the sound of the alarms, blissfully unaware of what was happening.
The two acts I enjoyed most were probably the Wee DJ’s (the fact that he is neither small – nor are there more than one of them – makes me smile). The fact that the Avionix Records folks were well acquainted with him meant that I was not going to miss his set – and I’m really glad I didn’t. I think he got the best reception I saw in the smaller venue over that weekend. I finished up the weekend before the last act played (knowing full well I had to get up at 8am on Monday ;)) so the last act I saw was Phuture 303 which completely blew my mind at some point early on Monday morning. I’d just forgotten how much fun it could be to bounce around with 2,500 other people to an astonishing selection of tunes.
BLOC – very well done – the sound systems were great (probably helped by the fact at least one was a Funktion 1), the act selection was great, the punters were great. The bouncers were cool, the chalet was brilliant. Even well enough equipped for the non vegans in our group to sit down Sunday evening to a full lamb roast and a couple of bottles of good red wine. Not sure how many other people did that on Sunday, but the look on James face (who popped in just before we dished up) was priceless.
No hestitation in saying I will be back again next year, hopefully with the same great bunch of people, to do it all over again!