Subject: Tribal Gathering
Date: 10 May 1995 23:13:52 +0100

Well, all i can say is i pity you poor lot stuck over there... you really did miss the event of the decade!! i was a bit "lost' to keep track of who i saw (and ended up missing all the big names) but i know i saw billy nasty and dag and was completly overwhelmed by the people, and the force of the music was absolutely mind-blowing. I really feel like i was part of something wonderful, and will be telling my son about it in years to come like those who experienced woodstock. It was just the FEEL of the place. if you even looked like losing it everyone offered you water/fresh air etc... and there was a good mix of mad people really going for it in all the tents (vibe or WOT???) and the friendly talky people sat chilling (literally at 5am!!) outside, just enjoying it.

coming out of a hot sweaty tent completely euphoric to see the sun coming up over the trees, dew on the grass and everything clean and new and everyone just loving every minute... absolute heaven. can't get over it.

i saw ONE drunk person swaying and shouting at people, but he just got ignored, and i suppose out of 17 hours of full-on partying that's not bad going!

more good points were the organisation... running water in the loos, and when the bottled water ran out they brought in a big tanker of the stuff with 5 taps on the back, all free. and there were blankets, phones and medical help in another tent, which is absolutely vital. although considering the number ofpeople there it didnt seem to be used much, everyone was sensible and looking after each other. i'd like to see lots of follow ups from people with info about specific bands/djs, cos i'm sure people wanna know definate things about the music as well as the unbelievably happy wonderful buzz of the place.

anyway, enough rambling from me, im sure other people have things to say.

but a big HELLO to everyone i talked to (had a t-shirt on that said Julie, if you remember!!) and even everyone i just smiled at cos it was absolutely everyone that made it what it was.

Here's to tribal gathering 96...

love

julie

On Tue, 9 May 1995, Jeff Linacre wrote:
Wheeeeewww, what a weekend I just had at Tribal Gathering,

Oh yes. Just slightly good.

Good things:

Orbital.

Orbital playing Belfast.

Orbital then playing Chime.

8000+ crowd reaction to Orbital playing Belfast then playing Chime

Chatting to Orbital for an hour earlier in the day :)

Richie Hawtin playing hard house

Plastikman. What can I say? Completely and utterly stunning, twas all new material, fantastically, arranged, tweaked etc etc. He used only 4 pieces of equipment that I could see; what looked like a 303, a 606(?), a sampler and a hardware sequencer.

Jeff Mills taking off where Hawtin left off, playing the hardest, most intelligent and non-cheesy hard techno/acid set I have ever heard, for two hours, into the sunrise... The slowest (most intense moment) being UR's Jupiter Jazz at about +8)

LFO on the ferris wheel

Free water, as much as you could drink...

Cool security who knew exactly what was going on.

The sights and sounds in the Tribal Tent when Air Liquide were on, basically this huge fuck off oval tent, with support posts in an innner oval arrangement, in this innner oval everybody was swaying and going generally mad to the music, in the outer oval there were just thousands of happy people sat down watching and rolling. An amazing sight that will live with me for a long time.

Bad points:

Current physical laws prohibit one from being in two different places at the same time, which meant I missed in order of most pissed off about missing: 808 state, darren emmerson, carl cox, laurent garnier, Luke Slater, tanith, dag, gayle san etc etc etc...

Some cunt leaping on top of Prodigy's equipment in the middle of their set, hence cutting it short after maybe 25 mins...

Advertising posters for Moby's and FSOL's new LPs everywhere. Hmmm, they're not commercial!

I cannot really think of anything else to criticise. Very smoothly organised.

I didn't see them at TG I was too busy shakin my thang to Billy Nasty, my friends did and were not impressed, apparently they only played Outer Space in full, and the rest of the set consisted of them starting a track then cutting it short with the MC coming in too loud. They were wicked at Brixton tho'.

I was in the press pit for all of their set. Was totally electric, Keith the dancer is just a complete and utter loonie, oozing anger etc etc. got some great pics of his tonsils as he screamed into my camera...
Unfortunately some tosser decided it would be a really cool thing to leap on top of Liam Howlett and his equipment stack, fizz buzz, humm and it was all over, I moved on to Richie Hawtin

I though the sound was just about right, loud but not painfully so, I spent all my time right at the front for all the acts though.

Plastikman, what I saw of RH didn't impress me, I think maybe he was suffering technical problems.

Well, his technical problems must be the envy of the techno world. Easily the slickest live set I've very seen, basically a refinement of his Djing technique, cutting and rising bass and treble, altering the time base, genreally whipping the crowd into a frenzy. It was all new material as well.

Despite these disappointments I had a great w/e and I'm looking forward to more events SOON! Seems like all the legal events coming up are almost exclusively Happy Hardcore/Drum n Bass/Jungle.

Both Reading and Glastonbury have sizable techno components this year.

greg ----- The Official WARP Web Site

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