Journey to the core of the earth

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Earthcore!

Earthcore Earthcore Earthcore! :)

This weekend saw the arrival of another Earthcore, held in the nap of country Victoria, at Undera just outside of Sheparton.

This was my fifth Earthcore and the third one at Undera, and it just gets better every year.

We drove up at about lunchtime Saturday, and were delayed due to an accident on the hume but got to the site about 5pm, had a bit of a wander around to check out where the various stages were, hit the bar for a few drinks and then started to tour the floors picking up various sets and running into old and new friends along the way.

From a music point of view we heard Morph, Simon Posford (Shpongled Dj set), Beka, Shangri-La, Siaqua, Dark Soho, Hallucinogen (more Simon Posford), Scott Alert, Lab 4, Tsuyoshi Suzuki and Mike Callander. We heard bits and pieces of a few others, but those were the ones we spent some time with. It's a bit hard at a festival like this, you can't be too locked in to seeing 'everyone' because it's just about impossible to spend more than 15 minutes with each performer, which doesn't give you a real chance to be taken up on the highs and brought down on the lows like a good set can do, besides, some of these people are so good that you get drawn into it and it becomes a part of you, and that's not something you voluntarily choose to end. In fact while we were listening to Mike Callander on the Market Stage on Sunday morning, I actually watched people try to pass by and just get drawn across into the dance floor, the tek was too good to let go :)

As usual I spent most of the time on the Hydra stage, the music was absolutely top notch, which is to be expected on the Psy Trance stage of a festival started out in with Psy roots. Highlights of the evening would include Dark Solo, psy trance created live by two guys each playing electric guitar and also messing with keyboards and synths, ripping up the stage big time, especially funny when an inflatable electric guitar materialised in the crowd and a few of us had a grind on the axe until one girl took it up on stage and jammed with the guys, so funny, I can't remember laughing and dancing so hard at the same time, except maybe when Simon Posford played a track with a sample from South Park of Cartman talking about hippies being an infestation. Joe and I nearly lost it as we'd seen these new episodes playing now but nobody else seemed to fully get it :) Another highlight was definitely the tek stage on Sunday morning. Not only did we run into Becy, but the music was fantastic and her crew were so much fun to dance with, really put it all out there and therefore allowed us to do the same.

Techno is a very interesting style of music, and Joe and I had a big discussion about it on the way home, it's not as hard or as freaky as some of the other styles, and in some ways it's kind of older and not as 'hip' or 'cool', but there's something about it that draws you in, forces you to dance and lets you really express yourself. The layered sounds and beats in good tek let you choose what level of commitment you want to give to the music and let you do a simple set of movements taking a main thread, as well as letting you push out and explore the sub-threads running through it, it's also very good for bonding with the people near you (as is Psy) because no matter how you're dancing to it, you're running along the same beat lines as someone else on the floor, whereas other styles like NRG or house only let you take the main beat, or half it or double it, and if you're not on the best then you're not in sync with everyone, so there's no space for you to be a little tired, or a little hyped up, no room for mellow on the same floor as charged up, no room for foot tapping and whole body dancing on the same floor. Tek has space for all of these in the same track, and it's pretty special to watch and be a part of. I know that sounds a little weird, but that's the way I see it, so too bad :) Another funny thing about tek is that I often start to hear things in the music, little words of phrases attach themselves, or parts of other songs make a pattern on my brain with a specific sound repetition in a tek track, so I'm often running nonsensical lyrics through my head, while my feet dance to one beat and my body and arms each dance to something slightly different. I dunno. It's just a lot of fun, especially with a good bunch of people on a beautiful sunny Sunday morning :)

By the time the stages had started to wind down, around 11 - 12 on Sunday, we were starting to get a bit tired and had done the traditional trick of moving our chairs to the edge of the dance floors so you can sit down for a bit in between dances and still listen to the music. Then once the whole thing was all said and done we hit the campsite to try and get some sleep before driving home. The original plan was to stay as long as we needed to, possibly overnight until Monday, but by about 6pm it was time to go, so we struck camp and headed down the road, getting slightly lost on the way out, but managing to find the main road again fairly easily, we then had a fairly uneventful drive home except for the complete morons on the Hume. Sheparton also played host to the Spring Nats that weekend, so there were a lot of hotted up cars on the road and a few people who were probably a bit too tired or drunk to be driving yet. Like when we came across a clump of six cars, three in each lane, each about two meters behind the car in front and all going the same speed, with one or two of them occasionally weaving across the lane a little bit then harshly correcting themselves. It was an accident waiting to happen but they were all too scared to speed up over the speed limit and too pig headed to slow down the space out or to allow one lane or another to get in front. We ended up just hanging back in the left lane until someone eventually decided to change the situation. There were a few other examples of sheer stupidity, but just suffice it to say, we're happy to have gotten home alive :) I still need to finish unpacking the car :)

Oh, I chose the above photo as I've had a running theme here of attractive girls in my blog entries. This girl wanted a photo with me and then wanted to take a photo of me, and once more, I was not interested in denying a cute girl her request. I guess I'm just a soft touch :)