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RAVE UP NORTH; TECHNO CAMPOUT PROMISES A SOUND GARDEN IN WISCONSIN WOODS

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Copyright 1996 Chicago Tribune Company
May 24, 1996 Friday, NORTH SPORTS FINAL EDITION
SECTION: FRIDAY; Pg. N; ZONE: CN; Take 2. FRIDAY'S GUIDE TO MOVIES & MUSIC.

BYLINE: Greg Kot.

BODY:

When Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters boarded the Magic Bus some 30 years ago -- destination marked "Furthur" -- who could have anticipated they would end up in a campground in southeastern Wisconsin, tripping out to electronic music programmed by deejays from Britain and Chicago?

Chances are Kesey and the Pranksters won't be at the Even Furthur techno campout this weekend, but the festival comes closer than most to capturing the original essence of the Magic Bus crew. Whereas the HORDE tour of post-hippie jamming bands, and the similarly named Furthur festival of Grateful Dead spinoff projects, will be playing the rather antiseptic confines of North America's amphitheaters this summer, the third annual Even Furthur fest is a back-to-nature weekend: three nights and four days of virtually nonstop music.

"There might be a couple of down hours," muses one of the festival's three organizers, David Prince of Chicago. "And there might not. I know I'm not going to sleep."

Prince has been known to push the envelope on a number of levels, most notably when he danced naked atop a set of speakers during a set by legendary U.K. deejay the Aphex Twin during the first Furthur festival, in 1994. Prince, who publishes a techno fanzine out of Chicago called Reactor and is co-writing a book with Timothy Leary, says not to expect an encore this year: "It's entertaining if you get naked once; more than once it becomes kind of creepy."

What can be expected is an exceptional lineup of electronic music programmed by deejays Mixmaster Morris, Frankie Bones, Scott Hardkiss, Daft Punk and Boo Williams, among others. In addition, there will be live performances by rock bands such as Low and Poi Energy Inc., an electro-rock offshoot of Chicago's Poi Dog Pondering.

Because of such exceptional lineups, the Even Furthur festival and its organizers -- Prince, Milwaukee deejay Kurt Eckes (a k a DJ Jethrox) and Minneapolis deejay Woody McBride (a k a DJ ESP) -- have won an international reputation. Raves, ubiquitous in Western Europe, are gaining in popularity in North America, but no one in the States has attempted a festival as logistically, geographically or artistically challenging as Even Furthur, let alone for three straight years.

"We basically got tired of throwing raves in dark, dirty warehouses," Prince says. "We wanted to hear this music outside, to take it even further, as they say. We were inspired by the British raves and 'The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test,' " Tom Wolfe's classic account of life with the Merry Pranksters in the mid-'60s.

Although previous Even Furthur events, also in rural Wisconsin, suffered from noise complaints and run-ins with authorities unused to having several thousand young people partying nonstop for three days to speaker-quaking electronic music, Prince says this year's fully licensed rave promises to be relatively trouble-free.

Would-be ravers are asked to call one of three numbers for directions to the festival, which begins Friday night and concludes Monday afternoon: 312-509-6334, 414-256-1733 or 612-649-4741. The festival's site was kept secret until Thursday to prevent people from showing up at the campground several days early.

- A more pronounced dance vibe has been creeping into Poi Dog Pondering's albums since 1992's "Volo Volo," and the group takes the impulse all the way into the nether regions of the club underground with the recent self-released EP "Electrique Plummagram" (Platetectonic). It contains remixes of several of the band's songs, plus a cover of Frankie Knuckles' "Hard Sometimes," which Poi has been performing in concert for several years.

"Some people have been horrified," leader Frank Orrall says with a laugh, referring to some of the band's longtime fans, who started grumbling about some of the club-oriented grooves that appeared on the 1995 Poi album "Pomegranate."

"I'm still going to make records using violas and oboes, but I was really turned on by that house-Manchester dance thing that started happening in the late '80s with groups like Happy Mondays."

Orrall has never considered Poi simply a rock band, and its open-ended quality has left some of the group's earlier, genre-obsessed fans bewildered.

"I think there's a severe disdain for programmed rhythms and synthesizers that can be traced back to those 'Disco sucks' buttons," he says. "But I listen to a group like Kraftwerk and I'm blown away, not just by how well they program and operate their machines, but how they still hit you emotionally."

Orrall is looking forward to Poi's appearance at this weekend's rave, in its Poi Energy Inc. incarnation, with programmed rhythms underpinning singers and keyboardists.

"I remember reading a quote from Steve Albini in which he said that a thousand people standing in a field listening to electronic music and high on Ecstasy aren't going to change the world," Orrall says. "And I disagreed with him."

brought to you by .....kate/keight O+

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