Drop it like it's hot

If you were at Nation of Gondwana this year, raise your hand - put your hands in the ai-yer, and wave 'em like you just don't ca-yer! 

For those of you who missed it - what can I say? You missed the most happy/hippieliscious, colourful & celebratory festival of the year. And no, I'm not biased. This is the absolute and objective truth, and one that requires spreading extensively.

The word "festival" traditionally conjures up pictures of smelly, overflowing toilets, stumbling around in the dark in search of one's own tent, sticky stuff (everywhere), sweaty armpits, drunk idiots, security guards, beer ads and of course, mosquitoes.

Not anymore, little Birdies. 

So picture this instead: let's say there was a God. And this God decided one day to take his electric razor and shave a huge circle in the middle of a thick forest, about 30 mins outside of Berlin. 

So you're in the middle of this huge circular field, and there are no security guards, no beer ads, no backstage areas. Instead, all you see is a dance floor in the grass, people walking around barefoot, elaborate colourful decorations, a little wooden DJ hut. 

You can feel the bass reverberating through the grass and into the tips of your toes. You see people wearing glitter, feathers in their hair, neon sunglasses. Umbrellas with stuffed animals perched on top. The music adapts to the sun - melancholic as it sets, slowly progressive as darkness sets in. You decide to explore a little bit, and walk into the forest: black lights hanging from the branches. A blue forest. You keep walking and all of a sudden you reach a clearing - it's a lake! And this lake is surrounded by christmas lights, swings, torches.

People sitting on one side and hanging out on the beach, people dancing in the sand on the other side to chill music. A bar behind the water floor, and a swing hanging from the trees. 

Inside the trees, a light show. Glittering fireflies, moving ripples of light, leopard skin patterns in the leaves. Lights everywhere! 

The sun comes up.

The best part: the fire brigade sets up a water hose and sends a fountain of water into the crowd when the sun gets too hot. This, in turn, creates a rainbow - right above the dancefloor, prompting people to undress and dance happily in the rain, underneath a perfect, almost touchable rainbow -

This track was playing at 8 in the morning, when Dominik Eulberg worked his magic to get the crowd to embrace the rising sun. "Noch ein Bass im Ärmel"  (meaning: "another bass up my sleeve") shows us the tension music can build, when you keep expecting and expecting the bass to drop now... no now,...ok now - only to realize this will not happen when you want it, but rather when the track has built up so much suspense, the only option left is to set the listener free with the final release.



This long, passionate text is my ode to Nation, my ode to this year's summer and my ode to Dominik Eulberg - who always manages to make tracks that combine filigree sounds with prolonged Schranz distortions: the result is a tantalizing track that celebrates the drop like the celebration of a perfect day.