Back from the Desert

I’ve been a fairly consistent poster on Wire to the Ear. I almost always post something each day. When I fly off to Europe it’s a bit more difficult but more and more hotels have good net access. The past few days playing two shows was a bit different. Besides not having internet access (or handing myself a huge AT&T data bill) I was busy having major fun. The first night in at Row14 in Barcelona was great and the 40k event in Fraga on the Desert called Monegros was something I won’t ever forget. I landed at JKF (NYC) late last night, got home slept a rock solid 8 hours and I’m sitting here attempting to wash enough of everything I just experienced to the back of my mind so I can start with spreadsheets and the energy business. Life is full so there’s my excuse for a few days of silence here. I’ll follow up with some photos from the weekend shortly.

Update: Here’s some photos…

For more info: thingstocome.com

This entry was written by Oliver Chesler, posted on July 20, 2010 at 6:11 am, filed under live performance and tagged festival, live performance, Monegros, Spain, The Horrorist, Things to Come Records. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.

The Horrorist report from Defqon.1 and the Montagood Festival.

I’m back in New York after I performed at two fun European summer festivals. Defqon.1 in a giant event (40,000 people) on the beach about an hour outside of Amsterdam in The Netherlands. It was a daytime festival and it was hot & humid as expected. Since the early 90′s I’ve played in Holland often so each one of these large events it’s a bit of a reunion. I had time to speak to french DJ Manu le Malin, UK producer Surgeon (Anthony Child) and Dutch hardcore producer Gizmo. Even without a soundcheck the show went off without a glitch. My equipment, especially my cases and bags did get throuoully sandy though. The show went from 3-4 in the afternoon so by the time I got back to the hotel it was time for a quick bite and then off to Spain.

The Spanish gig at the Montagood Festival was also quite large. The stage was built high above the audience which I don’t actually like. I really need to get close to people and make some eye contact. My set time was 5-6 in the morning so keep in mind I basically played in Amsterdam and 12 hours later without a real pit stop I’m setting up near Barcelona. Everything would have been perfect with the exception that it started to rain a bit about 10 minutes before my set began. The issue was this was an outdoor event and the only thing above me was open sky! As you know from a few posts ago I just had my Macbook Pro repaired so the last thing I wanted to do was give it a shower. The promoter jumped on stage and put a few garbage bag type tarps over my equipment. The show ended up great and I did a fair amount of jumping down about 20 feet to the crowd and back up again. I know it was about 20 feet high by the 2 foot bruises all over my legs from banging into the speakers I was climbing. The black and blue’s were well worth it because Spain is a country you want to spend time in and a good show will get you invited back.

The only complaint I really have about the weekend was the trip back. In retrospect the situation is hilarious and it speaks volumes about Karma. Long story short, a Dutch group called Angerfist also performed in Spain and they were in my van to the airport. They decided to drink a bottle of vodka straight right before the trip started. Needless to say we had to make a few pit stops so they could puke. God has an ironic way of punishing me.

While I clean the sand and water damage off my stuff check out a few photos…