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Nasoni Records Festival – 10 Years Anniversary Show,
23.9.2006, Die Insel, Berlin

As all Psychotropic Zone readers must know by now, Nasoni Records from Germany is absolutely one of our favourites among record labels. So it was just natural that we had to send a full representation to the company’s 10 years birthday party. The festival was located on an island by the river in the Treptower Park area that used to belong to the former East-Germany. The idyllic place was called Die Insel. We arrived just in time before the gig by Swedish DarXtar that started at 20:30 so we had some time to say hello to our old friends who were very amazed to see us there. The keyboard arsenal was cut down since their Psychotropic Zone gig, and they only had a laptop and a small analogue Korg with them, but that didn’t matter. Unfortunately we only had time to hear the first four tracks before we had to leave to check out what Vibravoid could offer live downstairs. The title track of the latest album ”We Came too Late” probably worked best of these four songs, and the Swedish space rockers seemed to go down well with the German audience and the local stoner chicks even started dancing. The whole gig, along with the whole Atomic Workers gig and part of the La Ira de Dios gig were broadcasted as a live stream at www.rockradio.de, so it’s possible to enjoy these later on, as well.

Darxtar

Darxtar

Vibravoid was actually the most important reason we decided to go to Berlin. The band’s strongly consciousness-expanding, psychedelic, sometimes heavy, sometimes floating acid rock has us under its spell and we got all of their releases. This Düsseldorf-based band has two guitarists, a bass player and a female drummer, and with this line up they were able to create a totally unbelievable bubbling, brain-frying sound. The band played a rather long set that included old classics like “Lovely Lady Dep O’Nair”, ”Ballspeaker” and ”She Is Just 13” and some brand new material. The Silver Apples and Strawberry Alarmclock covers worked great, as well. One of the highlights was “Astronomy Domine” that was played as a tribute to Syd Barret. The band rocked really hard, but at times they chilled out in a more peaceful way in some other reality. This was absolutely one of, if not the best, gigs I’ve seen this year. The whole full-packed downstairs hall went totally nuts and was transported into the vibrating universe of Vibravoid. The lightning at Die Insel was not the main emphasis, but during the Vibravoid show we did get to see some psychedelic plasma from the video projector.

Vibravoid

Vibravoid

We missed the first track of the Italian Atomic Workers who according to the timetable started at 22:15, but we just had to experience Vibravoid down to the last sound. This band that released their debut this year has some people from That’s All Folks reinforced with a dose of British psych greatness. Sun Dial’s main-man, guitarist-singer Gary Ramon has been one of my biggest idols for years, and I was really looking forward to see him live. The first song we heard was the opener of their debut album called “Embryonic Suicide”, and the singer almost immediately started his Iggy Pop/Jim Morrison imitation which was very funny to watch but the guy seemed to be dead serious about it. The band’s fuzz-filled music that takes its influences from 60’s psychedelia, kraut rock etc. worked very well and the band was also very entertaining. Gary played on the right corner of the stage in a very cool way but with style and emotion. Excellent! They also played “Hurdy Gurdy Man” by Dylan in the middle of their gig.

Atomic Workers

Atomic Workers

At one point during the Atomic Workers gig we realised we just had to go upstairs to check out at least a little of the long set by Polytoxicomane Philharmonie who had apparently already started at around ten and were supposed to play until half past one. The atmosphere in the red coloured upstairs was some how pleasantly living room-like, and this superb mushroom-oriented group jammed in a very nice way. It was a really good thing that we get to enjoy their music at least for a while, since we soon had to go and see the rest of the gig by Earthling Society from the UK. This band trusts heavily on space rock, the free festival spirit and the pagan past of the Brits. The band worked even surprisingly well. It was really nice to really hear the keyboards very well for a change, and the band’s live volume was so loud that you just couldn’t ignore them. The keyboard player had joined the band just a week before and learned the songs from a CD, but that didn’t affect the experience, and the members were also very happy with their performance. This is a really good band that will also play at next year’s Roadburn festival!

Earthling Society

Earthling Society

Polytoxicomane Philharmonie

Polytoxicomane Philharmonie

At this point of the evening the cheap beer and other refreshments were taking their toll and my notes get a bit promiscuous. In between midnight and two o’clock I roamed from the middle floor where the Peruvian La Ira de Dios played to the Zone Six gig downstairs and back. It was damned hard to decide what band to concentrate on, since I really love them both. La Ira de Dios plays heavy and psychedelic stoner rock and they really rocked playing tracks from the debut and the new album Acrheopterix that has just been released on Nasoni. One of the guys concentrated on switching the knobs on the effects, which brought in a nice, psychedelic extra feature to the sound. This is really tight band that I’d love to see in Finland one day.

La Ira De Dios

La Ira De Dios

Zone Six

Zone Six

The German Zone Six who play 100% improvised music gave us an extremely cosmic and excellent set that affected the already expanded state of consciousness of the audience. One of the best bands on Nasoni for sure. This was a really great ending for this marvellous festival! There should be more festivals like this! By the way, it was nice to chat a bit with Dave Schmidt during the evening. Dave has also been involved in other really good bands and also makes amazing music on his own as Sula Bassana. Although the practical arrangements were not just perfect (for example we lost 30€ worth of booze and wine we had brought as a present and were promised to get back at the door when we would leave), the Nasoni ten years birthday was absolutely one of the best parties I’ve ever been to. Hans-Georg has an excellent taste what comes to psychedelic rock, I must say. Thanks for the whiskey, by the way, among all other things! I hope we don’t have to wait for another ten years for the next Nasoni happening... Nasoni rules!

www.nasoni-records.com

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The 11th Roadburn Festival, Tilburg, Hollanti, 22.4.2006

This year I just had to get to Roadburn, the heavy stoner/psych/space rock festival that already celebrated its 11 th birthday. During just one day it was possible to see three of my favourite bands: Hawkwind, Ozric Tentacles and The Bevis Frond plus another dozen of other great groups and The Netherlands is of course the right country for friends of this kind of music, anyway. We flew to Amsterdam the previous evening and spent a rather quiet night there. This meant that we missed the Roadburn pre-party where it would have been possible to chat with the bands and other fans. Next time I won't make the same mistake since the actual festival day is so busy that you really don't have much time to be social, if you want to see as many bands as possible. The festival was again held in Tilburg, a cosy and the fifth biggest town in The Netherlands. The venue was called 013 and turned out to be a very nice and suitably sized place. 2000 tickets have been sold, and not much more people could have squeezed in. The doors opened at three o'clock, and I was supposed to meet some Bevis Frond fans at a nearby coffee shop at two, but unfortunately I didn't make it since we were running a bit late. We did manage to get to the festival site before the first band started, although a couple of my friends had forgot their tickets to the hotel so they had to go back to get them...

The queuing seemed to be quite painless, and you could instantly see that the circumstances would be great for an amazing festival. The personnel at 013 were very polite and friendly. The members and friends of the bands were selling their albums and shirts in the corridors and I really had to hold my horses. The bands played in three different halls and it took a little while to figure out which hall was which. The first band to perform at the small hall (The Green Room) was a Swedish doom band Witchcraft. They were supposed to be the support act on the Monster Magnet's European tour that was cancelled because Wyndorf took an overdose, so now I had to see what I had missed and check them out. Their brand of metal sounded very good and in addition to doom they had some influences from at least NWOBHM, although the stuff was at times very slow. I think the singer was the band's weakest link because he didn't have that much power in his voice, but he still wasn't bad at all. I just couldn't watch the whole show since I had to exchange some tokens to buy beer and hurry to see Spacehead at the big Space Rock Stage. I must admit that it was nice to hear "Electrified" by my band Dark Sun on the massive PA system before the gig… Thanks a lot DJ (Kosmic Ken?)! It was also nice to hear Vibravoid from the CD and all the other stuff that was played was great, too.

After the short space intro the band lead by Hawkwind roadie Mr. Dibs started their powerful rocking. With this band you really don't have to think very hard about what style they do, it's very clear that this is a heavy space rock band. It was great that the keyboards and space sounds were very audible in the mix, and the band was now A LOT tighter than when I saw them the last time at the Hawkfan meeting in Hamburg. The strong, monotonic and hypnotic voice of Mr. Dibs pierced directly into the back of your skull and the punky energy of the band didn't leave you cold. The set was a good mixture of fast rock blasts (for example "Axis" and "Dark Star") and bit slower, hypnotic and psychedelic tracks. Excellent band! The Solar 515 projectors started to function in the middle of the gig and the psychedelic visions added a lot to the enjoyment. Unfortunately I totally missed Abramis Brama who played at the same time, but I heard that their gig was a killer.

The next band we went to see holding bratwursts in our hands was Solace, who convinced me with their heavy stoner/doom riffing. At some point the band sounded like old Paradise Lost, at times the more groovy touch reminded me of Cathedral. A very good band, it was too bad that we couldn't get any closer because the hall was so little and we had those bratwurst baguettes that were dripping mayonnaise and ketchup all over the place. In addition, we soon had to barge to see The Bevis Frond, who were supposed to play on The Space Rock Stage at 18:00. In my opinion we were there just in time, but Nick Saloman and friends surprised us and were already doing their heavy opening jam. This was the gig that I had been mostly looking forward to, since although I've been a die-hard Bevis fan since the beginning of the 90's I had never seen them live. I think the present line-up is just excellent, and now as an extra treat we would also get the presence one of my guitar heroes along with Nick, Bari Watts. Not only that, but the band had said that the gig would be more like a guitar jam feast type of thing than usual, and I have never anything against that… Already in the beginning I noticed to my disillusion that Bari's guitar was way too low in the mix, so that you could barely hear it. Respectively, Paul "The Alchemysts guy" Simmons' guitar was in my opinion a bit too loud compared to Nick's. I didn't let this get too much in the way, since just seeing Nick and the bass player Adrian Shaw alive on stage in front of me felt so good. I've been corresponding with these gentlemen by mail and email, but there they were, in flesh and blood! Nick's voice was in great shape and the playing was very fluent. I think that Nick is a very funny, humane and genuine down-to-earth type of guy, and it was a lot of fun to listen to his chatting in between the songs, and the swinging of the mike during "Maybe" was just so disarming to watch. One of my biggest idols. The set wasn't so different to the ones they have been playing during the last couple of years, after all, but there were more jamming inside the songs than usual. And they only had 75 minutes to play, so they had to drop some of their live favourites. I would also like to have heard "Stain on the Sun" and "Reflections in a Tall Mirror", for example. The new track "Lean On" was a very interesting and fine, a bit more relaxed number. Especially during "Eyes in the Back of My Head" the guitar solos were really great as the guys truly shined. The obligatory ending piece "Down Time" always includes solos by everyone, and this time after that we also heard some heavy, slow jamming that was very suitable for the style of this festival and Nick played with his electric dulcimer. I heard that the band had to change their backline at the last minute and this might have caused some problems with the sound. Also, Nick's vocal microphone made some screaming noises occasionally, which I think was strange. Jules had some troubles with his drums, like one crash stand fell down from the drum platform during a song, and apparently his bass pedal was out of order for a while, but it didn't really bother me. Despite the little bit of bad luck this was one of the best gigs I've ever seen! The psychedelic projectors were projecting excellent, psychedelic patterns to the wide-screen during the whole gig. Here's the set list:

After the Frond there was 30 minutes left before Ozric Tentacles would start their gig with (yet another…) new line-up featuring Ed Wynne's wife on bass. Time passed by easily when I tried to push my way through little hall upstairs (The Orange Factory) to experience the primitive, snotty, high-energy suburban-acid-punk-stoner-rock of The Heads from a closer range. The hall was full-packed with raving, totally mad crowd and the temperature was unbearable. As an old, fat, space rocker I couldn't stand this for long so I tried to find a few guys that I wanted to meet. Stefan from Colour Haze was one of the guys I had to have a few words with. Then back to the Space Rock Stage.

As far as I can remember, Ozrics Tentacles started little late sometime before eight. Before that, the DJ played some Dark Sun AGAIN, this time from Feed Your Mind album… My band mate had to leave the hall in shame; I guess we just have to get some new material for the DJ by the next festival. I started watching the show while leaning on the right side wall, but soon I had to detach myself, since the whole wall was vibrating from the bass frequencies! I heard that the present sound guy of the band is more used to mix techno acts which might have had something to do with the somewhat weird sound of the band. The line-up was almost totally different to the last gig I saw the band in Helsinki. According to the rumours the new keyboard player had just been in the band for a very short time, and the same apparently goes for the female bassist. Compared to the older Ozrics the sonic world was at times even surprisingly minimal and compact, which is not always a bad thing. I think the band also played some new tracks, but of course there were some old live favourites, as well, like the ultra fast "Throbbe" and "Sploosh!". There was no way I could have put down the complete set list, since I have difficulties in remembering the titles for instrumentals.

Although the gig worked incredibly well at its best and the band was at times able to put the audience into mass hypnosis, the gig still was a minor disappointment for me even to that degree, that I left the hall for a while to see some more of The Heads. After that I placed myself to the highest and most far-away place possible in the big hall with Juba from Pseudo Sun and the sound and volume was actually more bearable up from up there. Still a good gig, even though some people didn't like it.

According to the schedule Ufomammut had begun to create their monstrous prog/doom walls of sound at 20:55, so there was time to check them out after the Ozrics. I did like their primeval, psychedelic and hypnotic tuned-down banging a lot. A great band with plenty of buzz! I must investigate further.

Hawkwind, the headliner that evening, happens to be my favourite band, so I was starting to feel really high. The band had two hours to play in between 21:45 and 23:45 , but they didn't actually play that long. The band was going to record the show for a possible live album/DVD release, so they had really put a lot of attention to the lightshow and sound, for sure. There were plenty of projectors all right and also other kinds of psychedelic and amazing lights. After the intro we got "The Right Stuff" that had been re-worked quite a lot. Sounding great and a really good feel all the way from the start! "Sword of the East" continued the heavy style, and the dancers (some kind of an angel and a devil) joined the band in the middle section. The band played a bit different tracks from their old catalogue now than a year or two ago. For example, it was amazing to hear "Seven by Seven" where Mr. Dibs delivered the Robert Calvert section in the middle part and, from the same period, "Upside Down" that was now played with a fast beat. As usual, from the new album we got to hear "Greenback Massacre", the instrumental "Out Here We Are" and "Angela Android" sung by the drummer. "Brainstrorm" rocked like hell! Dave seemed to play a little more solos than usual, which was great. All in all, a wonderful gig with a really good sound, it was just perfect! They could have asked Adrian Shaw to join them for "Spirits of the Age", since they were in the next dressing room, but that didn't happen… Here's the set list:

After the encore, "Brainbox Pollution", the full-packed hall that was charged with ecstatic energy was left to shout for more, but I decided to vanish to check out the last half of the gig by Colour Haze from Germany, since the band is one of my new acquaintances that I've started to like very much. It was too bad that the beginning of the gig overlapped with Hawkwind, because this trio really plays some tight stuff. Stefan, the leader of the band truly has a guitar style of his own, and also a really good singing voice. He had been suffering from a little flu, but it didn't seem to affect his delivery. Excellent, innovative and interesting 70's styled stoner rock. This band deserves to become huge!

I missed the desert rock of Brant Björk, but that couldn't be helped. The same thing happened with Orange Goblin who played their whole gig during the same time as Hawkwind, which irritates me even more. I didn't also see any of Leaf Hound, but I heard that they didn't really kick ass. In conclusion, this was an extremely successful festival with some incredibly good bands! Everything worked very well, and the only troublemaker that I saw was speedily removed during the early stage of the Bevis Frond gig. One could have thought that a festival like this might have gained some more disturbances, but at least in my opinion the audience was very friendly, clean and considerate and in a suitable state. Totally different to for example the Finnish open air festivals during the summer time. Apparently I could have gone to the backstage area with my photo pass, but there actually was no time for that. I'm a bit bothered that didn't have time to meet the Bevis Frond in person. I must try to do that some other time. A huge thank you to Walter for organizing this totally incredible festival! The 11 th Roadburn Festival was the best festival I've ever been to.

Go and listen to the gigs here: http://3voor12.vpro.nl/3voor12/magazines/news/index.jsp

www.roadburn.com

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