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PHAT2 partyreport Attending PHAT2 was kind of pretty random decision for me. I just seen some photos of the partyplace and got an invitation from Raver plus life was sucking in general here in Germany. So I grabbed next plane to the distant city of Riga in Latvia. DAY 0 After air travel in little propellermachine via Finland, smiling stewardesses and lots of free coffee i arrived in Riga airport which greeted 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 ever to type all the names of the people entering into computer). I managed to find my way to the center of Riga where I was picked up by a super stressed Raver who was hurrying for some radio or tv or whatever interview (ed. - both of them) so he dumped me at a cozy office place. There were already some of the other foreigners there, including Zden/Satori from Slovakia who was hacking on his notebook and playing with his lomo style mini digicam (ed. - check his P.2 lomo pictures here: http://satori.sk/lomo.html). There was some speech by a russian art guy (ed. - Lev Manovich, USA) about computer art which seemed to be pretty ridiculous and/or pretentious to any scener. Good way to kill time anyway. Later on some other people showed up including Tero and Lackluster (aka Deetsay/DCS and Distance/TPOLM)- two musicians (ed. - Deetsay is also coder) from Finland and a whole crowd moved through Riga's center to the Raver's flat to hang out there with tea and some little dope. All very relaxed. As the night grew 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 partyplace 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 partyplace with our native guide Agnes (ed. - Vxn/PHT graffiti section;). The place was still empty but just incredibly 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 wandered around the huge factory building for hours just taking photos and simply being awed by the atmosphere (images of the place and party can be found at http://shiva.untergrund.net). No party going on yet though. Slowly in the afternoon people started to bring in equipment, beamers, sound systems, chairs and I was helping setting the stuff up. Also Rawhead/Faktory (ed. after P.2 he also joined PHT) from UK showed up with whom I wanted to do a co-prod intro thingy. Having more coffee and some relaxing talks. In the night the whole building was transformed into a completely different place with lighting and loud music on three floors going on. Lots of people were pouring in, and beer + sound made one to ignore nights coldness quickly. Somewhen few people from Sweden arrived (goddamn, my memory for names is non-existent) (ed. - perhaps Goto80/Hack'n'Trade/Up Rough, his girlfriend, 4D-Man/Phantasy, Lai/Phantasy and an another databoy I dont know name of). Towards the morning we returned to the hotel. Sleep. DAY 2 Again, no party + zero scene activity at the party place during the day, so me and some of other foreigners went out and checked out the city doing classic 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 (ed. - too bad you didn't manage to check out ghetto area;) ask Zden, he knows!). So we had a good time and what's even more important, we were fresh and in good shape for the upcoming night full of great music, booze and some occasional dope. The music was really cool (maybe you noticed by now, PHAT2 was 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) (ed. - random statistics ltd shows ~50 sceners vs ~1500 dancers). There was very diverse stuff, ranging from standard house DJs spinning on the top floor (ed. - more like techno?) and weird noise being mixed on walkman players (ed. - that was hardcore and gabber on DJ West's minimalistic soundsystem!) to rapping gypsies in the basement. DAY 3 Another day passed the dull way.. 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 (ed. - can't be you didnt notice all the other demoactivities on friday's nite? :) but somehow the hardware and software available sucked big time. Luckily lots of music started to bang again and I had brought enough booze and a thick blanket from the hotel fighting the coldness well. The absolute top event here and kind of a defining moment to the whole PHAT2 experience for me was Tero from Finland playing live what he calls "heavy metal on a c64" through a massive soundsystem in an almost empty basement area of the factory after having drunk a bottle of vodka and Zden projecting VJ stuff on a bare concrete wall, freezing cold, 6 in morning.. Amazing. I just noticed mixing up days, that was day 2 actually, day 3 had some kind of competitions around that time, but nothing I could really remember. Zden had some demo in a cool Satori noisestyle (ed. - Satori demo was played live) but that's about it. Lots of music compos though. I forgot. DAY 4 Party was over, I did some more sightseeing in Riga with a cool DJ from Denmark (ed. - Fresco/Stylus Force), mostly sitting around in cafes and discussing. In the night there was some chilling at Raver's place again... yay. DAY 5 Back home. Work. Remembering it, P.2 was exhausting but really cool party with living in a completely weird nonstop way for a few days and giving me a great break. If you like really weird parties, come to PHAT, but do not expect too much of demo scene there (ed. - unless you come indeed and sceners vs. dancers ratio gets more balanced). additional resources: PHAT2 webpage: http://scene.lv Photos and videos: http://808.lv/gallery/PHAT2_@_VEF_2002 |