phat2 report
/shiva^kolor
11:23 wednesday mourning i just got to work, and raver is asking for a phat2
report from me by mail... why not. phat 2 was some kind of pretty random
descision for me to attend. i just had seen some photos of the partyplace and
gotten an invitation by raver, and life in general sucked a lot around germany
so i grabbed the next plane to the foreign riga/latvia location.
day 0
plane traveling in little propeler machines via finland, smiling stewardesses
and lots of free coffee later i arrived at riga airport which greated me with
special super slow custom checking (they got the most grim looking and slowest
in the world one finger key search typing police guy to type all the names of
the people entering into a computer). i managed to find my way to the center of
riga where i was picked up by a super stressed raver who was in for some radio
or tv or whatever interview, so he dumped me at a cozy office place. there were
already some of the other few foreigners there, including zden^satori who was
hacking on his notebook and playing with his lomo style mini digicam. there was
some speech by a russian art guy about computer art which had to seem pretty
ridiculous and or pretentious to any scener. good a way to kill time still. in
the night some other people showed up including tero and lackluster - two
musicians from finland and a whole crowd walked through riga to ravers flat to
hang out there with tea and some little dope. all very relaxed. as the night
grew later all the foreigners (really a small bunch pretty much sticking
together) were taken to a very cheap but clean hotel kind of place quite close
to the party place where we would keep staying for the night. more comfortable
than a sleeping hall.
day 1
after getting up and having some breakfast (coffee, apple pie!) we moved on to
the actual party place with our native guide agnes. the place was empty but just
incredible amazing whatever. it was an old industrial building completly in
ruins with such a cool flair of decay and ancient communist technology + debris
everywhere. we wanderd around that huge factroy building for hours just taking
photos and simply being awed by the atmosphere (images of the place can be found
at shiva.untergrund.net). no party going on yet, though. slowly in the afternoon
people started bringing in equipment, beamers, sound systems, chairs and i
helped setting stuff up. also rawhead^faktory showed up whit whom i wanted to to
a coprod intro thingy. having more coffee and some relaxing talks.
in the night the whole building was transformed into a completly different place
with lighting and loud music on three floors going on. lots of people were
pouring in, and beer + sound made one ignore the nights cold quickly. sometime
some people from sweden arrived (godamn my memory for names is nonexistent).
some time in the mourning we went back to the hotel. sleep.
day 2
again, no party + zero scene activity at the party place itself during the day,
so me and some of the other foreigners checked out the city, doing classicv
sightseeing and most of all feeding ourselves. riga is a really nice city in the
center, almost like any other european city, but with a special flair of the
huge market and a diverse lot of cafes and bars. so we had a good time, and
especially we were fresh and in shape for the next night full of great music,
booze and some occasional dope. the music was really cool (you maybe notice by
now, phat2 was much less of a scene event than a music festival in a really
neato location - the ratio of like max 20 sceners to a few hundred dancing
people).. there was very diverse stuff, from standard house djs spinning on the
top floor through weird noise played on walkmen in the middle down to rapping
gypsies in the basement.
day 3
another day passed dully ... do not ask me how.. i probably had some food and so
on, but it was evening very soon after getting up anyway. now there was actually
some tiny bit of demo watching going on in the former kitchen area of the
factory building, but somehow the hardware and available software sucked big
time. luckily lots of music started again and i had brought enough booze and a
thick blanket from the hotel against the cold. the absolute top event here and
kind of a defining moment to the whole phat 2 expirience for me was tero from
finland playing what he calls "heavy metal on a c64" through a huge pa
in an almost empty basement area of the factory after having drunk a bottle of
schnaps, zden projection vj stuff on a bare concrete wall, freezing cold, 6 in
mourning.. amazing.
i just notice mixing up days, that was on day 2 actually, day 3 had some kind of
competitions around that time, but nothing i could really remember. zden had
some demo which was cool satori noise style but that was all. lots of music
compos though. i forget.
day 4
party was over, i did some more sightseeing in riga with a cool dj from denmark,
mostly sitting around cafes and discussing. in the night there was some chilling
at ravers place again... yay.
day 5
back home. work. remebering that phat was exhausting but really cool party with
living in a completly weird, nonstop way for a few days giving me a great break.
if you like really weird parties come to phat, but do not expect too much demo
scene there.