{"id":5442,"date":"2012-05-23T15:00:07","date_gmt":"2012-05-23T06:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/?p=5442"},"modified":"2012-05-24T04:40:08","modified_gmt":"2012-05-23T19:40:08","slug":"star-fest-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/archives\/2012\/05\/23\/star-fest-2012\/","title":{"rendered":"Star Fest 2012"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last weekend was the Star Festival<\/a>: a newly-minted, small-scale electronic music festival.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> After a measly hour-and-a-half car ride (yay for local Kansai festivals!), Rei-the-man, Fanfan, Junko and yours truly arrived there early afternoon, somehow managing to be the very first car to enter festival grounds and probably not far from last to leave. In between: twenty-four (and some) hours of non-stop music, fun and dancing, the details of which shall remain safely out of the internets, just in case I do<\/em> decide to run for public office one day.<\/p>\n

But that still leaves room for a good ol’ festival acts blow-by-blow recount (don’t worry: more like this one<\/a> than this one<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Afternoon<\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/a> Getting us into our afternoon groove upon arrival, was friend of the gang Bayon<\/a><\/strong>, pushing his usual nice selection of techy and dubby house.
\nTo be honest, I could have rocked it to east-Mongolian goa trance if necessary: just for the pleasure of dancing barefoot surrounded by forests and mountains on a warm late-Spring afternoon.<\/p>\n

In a concerted decision, our entire carpooling group decided to retire to our majestic campground for a replenishing afternoon nap (that’s what happens when your breakfast consist of one onigiri and two large-size kirins).<\/p>\n

Evening<\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/a> Sleep, food and drinks later, we parked our funky butts in front of DJ Harvey<\/a><\/strong>: club music veteran that had faintly entered my radar in the past, but I had never heard live. Definitely one of the two best of the weekend. As with most of my personal DJing heroes, his set was a very eclectic mix of styles spanning the range from funk\/disco all the way to hard techno, with healthy doses of electro in the middle. Highlight among the highlights: his epic set-closing 15 minutes of I feel Love<\/em><\/a> (most likely the Patrick Cowley<\/a> remix, but, erm, my notes for the evening are a bit blurry). A nice homage to the recently departed Queen of Disco & Godmother of Electro<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Aftermath was a little more hesitant, with time spent between stages, getting glimpses of DJ Nobu<\/strong> and mainly enjoying 80kidz<\/a><\/strong>‘s DJ set (more than 5 years since last hearing them at some tiny Shibuya club). Solid electro, as always.<\/p>\n

The transition to DJ Aki<\/strong> around midnight prompted a hasty retreat to other stages where the music did not associate so closely with vivid memories of hoodie-wearing tweakers joylessly dancing in some damp East-end basement (sorry hardcore D&B fans, I love you but that Amen break’s gotta die).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Rest of the evening\/night was spent in the vicinity of the third and smallest stage (“Chillmountain booth”), enjoying some damn funky grooves till late. Unfortunately, I have no idea who the two-three guys taking over the decks in succession were, and the official website’s section for this stage only gives artist names<\/a> with no timeslot information.<\/p>\n

Eventually, 3-4am was deemed as good a time as any for a retreat to our tent, followed by some attempt at sleep. Incidentally, the overall small size of the festival grounds (less than 5 minutes to walk one end to the other), while contributing a great deal to the brilliant atmosphere, made for very trying sleeping conditions: forget ear-plugs, it takes some particularly advanced skills (or lots of alcohol) to get to sleep when not one, but two booming basses are shaking the ground under your ears.<\/p>\n

Morning<\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/a> Early morning tunes and good vibes were also courtesy of anonymous DJs at the nearby Chillmountain stage (I woke up to some loungy downtempo female cover of \u4e0a\u3092\u5411\u3044\u3066\u6b69\u3053\u3046<\/a>, which is more than I can say about most mornings). As it turned out, sleep was a lot easier to achieve, lying on the grass under the sun in front of the stage, than up in our tent…<\/p>\n

After some tasty Thai breakfast, courtesy of the Japonica booth<\/a>, we got treated to a brilliant closing set by Calm<\/a><\/strong>: old acquaintance from way<\/a> back<\/a> and easily my favourite Japanese DJ. Hearing his very special blend of deep house, electro, soul, jazzy disco and the occasional true-to-form reggae track (among others: a beautiful downtempo cover<\/a> of Minnie Riperton’s standard<\/a>) makes it easy to see why he is a staple of day-parties across the country: his music is the perfect soundtrack for a shiny sunny day.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

With an unprecedented hour of extra dancing, way past official closing time (if you’ve been anywhere in Japan, you know that even the most free-form, disorganised, hippie event will end on freaking schedule<\/em>, not one minute after it is supposed to), we slowly packed our way back. An hour drive later (did I mention: yay for local festivals!), we were replenishing our energy in Kyoto with some kaiten-zushi before heading home for some much-needed quiet sleepy time.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

One more thing…<\/h3>\n

OK, now that we have established how unreservedly brilliant this whole weekend was, time to open the negativity spigot and rain some cranky-old-fartness on that post. Merely an observation, really: I am honestly not all that bothered by it…<\/p>\n

So anyway: this is the year 2012 and DJing is dead<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Not electronic music, mind you, not even live<\/em> electronic music, but proper DJing by people whose main job it is to skillfully blend two (or more) tracks while people dance to it.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Out of all the people I heard this weekend, setting aside two veteran DJs (who each had easily a decade or two over my own age), every single artist I named had absolutely no skill at mixing records (ranging from continuous tempo-deaf cross-fading to endless trainwrecking). Which would not be such a problem if they weren’t, you know, trying to mix records<\/em> (instead of focussing solely on producing live sounds, which some of them are probably good at). Not only that, but I swear I seemed to be the only guy noticing that, all of a sudden, the smooth-playing track had turned into a laundromat concert, making it impossible to even dance to.<\/p>\n

Having committed my fair share of blunders and trainwrecks, I’d be the last to throw the stone at another beginner-DJ… but it somehow boggles my mind that it would be considered par-for-the-course from festival headliners (some of whom really ought to be better by now: 5 years after I last heard them trainwreck their way through an evening). And don’t get me started on how laughably basic it is to achieve halfway-decent mixing on its own, using modern techniques (only a couple of these guys actually tried spinning records, and they were usually not the worst).<\/p>\n

My conclusion being: nobody cares anymore… as long as the tracks sound good and the bass are compressed, there’s nothing a little reverb and a quick cross-fading won’t solve. The times, they are a-changing bro. I could live with that, if not for the fact that it makes for a tiresome experience on a dancefloor.
\n<\/old-man-rant><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last weekend was the Star Festival: a newly-minted, small-scale electronic music festival. After a measly hour-and-a-half car ride (yay for local Kansai festivals!), Rei-the-man, Fanfan, Junko and yours truly arrived there early afternoon, somehow managing to be the very first car to enter festival grounds and probably not far from last to leave. In between: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-parties","category-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5442"}],"version-history":[{"count":27,"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5442\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5478,"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5442\/revisions\/5478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}