Freerotation 2009
While I prevaricate over what or whether to write about Freerotation 2024, I thought it might divert you all to read what my barely-23-year-old self wrote about Freerotation 2009, which was the first of three editions I attended before taking a 13 year break.
This was published on my original wordpress blog, and of course some things about Freero and about me have changed since then — comically so, in some instances — but many things remain pretty much the same.
(NB the photographs, dredged from the facebook archives, are not mine.)
FREEROTATION 2009 (published 20/08/09)
About an hour ago there was a Turneresque sky over to the West of London. Billowing clouds lit from beneath with gold, pink and peach, blazing away against the fading blue. I saw the same combination of colours early on Sunday morning, after a hard slog with E up the wooded hill behind Baskerville Hall near Hay-On-Wye in Wales. We were at the tail end of a candyflip, the astral euphoria of a few hours earlier now more balanced and earthly, fit for the purpose of a sunrise ramble. For me, where mdma trades in mental pictures that are as elusive afterwards as they were vivid at the time, acid tends to leave me with well-preserved snapshots of particular moments, generally centred around textures or living things. So the most memorable image I have of Freerotation 2009 is standing knee-deep in wild grass at the top of the Wye Valley, far enough from the festival beats to have almost complete silence, save the wind rushing in my ears and the basic chatter of the countryside. The meadow was luminescent from the early light (it must have been about 6 or 7am; it had grown light as we climbed through the dimness of the wood) and it was breathtakingly beautiful.
Of course you can have beauty in noise and activity, too, and of course you don’t need drugs to appreciate it either. Within an hour or so of arriving at the venue (such a mundane word…I reckon ‘setting’ is more appropriate) I was already bowled over by the surroundings. We camped under a purple tree (THE purple tree), making sure to have a view of the hotel from the porch of G’s tent. The building itself was much smaller than I had expected, but that made it less imposing and more welcoming. We immediately noticed the giant cedar to the left of the house, its branches on one side extending out over the lawn in front of the house, on the other swooping down over a secluded garden below. We sat on the lowest branch later in the evening, only to be reprimanded (politely) by one of the two or three security guards at the event. At 4am that morning I would look up to unexpectedly see several people perched much higher in the tree, surveying the now moderately-busy campsite.
Friday:
I can’t really describe the inside of the house in a way that does justice to how strange it first seemed. By the end of the weekend, though, it felt a bit like I’d spent a week’s field trip there, to the extent of knowing which toilets were the nicest. Once the sun had gone down on the first evening, we took a look at the haphazard line-ups and set about waiting for Dandy Jack. DJ Bone’s cancellation (it sounds like he had a rough time at immigration – eugh) meant nothing was really in order, so the first real event turned out to be Mark-Henning instead. The sound in the main room was good for the most part, but I found it a bit tiring sometimes, especially during Jackmate’s DJ set, so I settled into a pattern I’d stick to for the rest of the weekend: about 20 minutes inside, then 10-15 minutes out again. The beauty of a setting like that is that it doesn’t seem a waste to step outside for a while; quite the opposite, in fact.
Dandy Jack was as energised as I’d been expecting and he conjured the first huge bassline of the weekend, albeit only for about 30 seconds. Later he meandered a bit, so E and I ducked into the second room to hear someone playing the classic Fabric Room 1 sound for 15 minutes or so. I hadn’t expected to hear anything like that during the weekend and it made me really nostalgic. I think it might have been around this point that we first acquainted ourselves with the other tree personality in the grounds, the Wellingtonia looming over the front drive, and E gave me a lesson on Ghandi. Finally, back in the main room, Sven Weisemann launched into an hour of mixing tricks and headbanging – I came to the room to hear ‘Throw’ and ‘Rose Rouge’ doing battle for minutes, and then he took ‘Wax 10001’ for an inspired ride.
Later it got a bit familiar and less urgent, and that proved to be the last real attempt I made at the music. Returning to the tent, we put on some Jan Krueger and Cabanne, took in some K, shared out some satsumas and talked about the future (as usual). That was a very pleasant way to end the evening and, in the morning, a proper shower and some pasta was a very pleasant way to start the day.
Saturday:
I can’t really remember what happened during the day on Saturday. We got more beer and ate some panini (E had a panino) in the cafe. I think we spent most of it pleasantly stoned. There was a lot of gingerbread. I tried giving RNDM a go in the second room, but the bass was unbearable even with earplugs so I had to give up. I was thinking of trying XDB too, but in the end Sonja Moonear’s unusual set behind the decks in the cafe proved too interesting to leave. She opened with Moritz Von Oswald Trio’s ‘Pattern Three’, melted together with both sides of Margaret Dygas’ new EP on Perlon. Before long it was growing dark again and we all had to have a nap. Somewhere in that nap I remember the zip to my bedroom being opened and a little bit of paper being passed through, so I suppose by the time I woke up properly I was already on the way up.
Lakuti was the first person we really wanted to see, and she cemented her reputation as one of the best DJs (if not the best?) that London has going. I felt extremely lucky to hear ‘Face It’ out for the first time (incidentally I finally bought a copy of the reissue a couple of weeks ago, so that made me smile) and even more lucky to hear her playing more spacey Detroit sounds than the last time we saw her. Over the course of the weekend I’d come to realise what a focal point she is for the house scene not just in London but around the world – you just have to look at the artists and releases on Uzuri, go to the Süd parties, and listen to Lakuti’s own sets to appreciate the strength of what she does. All I can keep saying is thank you.
Move D was a bit too loud, but played ‘Some Lovin’ so I was happy. Wbeeza was playing a very good liveset in the second room, but there the problem was a complete lack of air circulation and an overactive visuals projector, which made my body want to shut down all sensory functions. Again, breaks outside came to the rescue, including a supremely surreal excursion through a parallel event happening round the back of the house: Clyro Court, the one-time nightspot of G’s rural youth, brought home the acid in a way I couldn’t have imagined. Luckily, it was only 20 metres or so back to the front door of the hotel, and back into the fray. A break soon after, spent in the lovely gazebo in front of the hotel, put the candyflip in motion. It always comes on quicker than I expect, and before I knew it Wbeeza was finishing up, Jitterbug was taking to the decks and that floaty feeling had started to make its presence felt.
Jitterbug’s on Uzuri too, of course, and his Dream Memory EP from earlier this year matches the standard of the rest of the label’s output. His DJing is even better, though. Omar-S leapt out of the speakers and slapped us round the face (and ass), Pépé Bradock’s ‘Path Of Most Resistance’, which sounds sublime at home, came roaring out into the room and all but knocked me over. It was awesome. I could have listened to that for a long time. Then he went and played ‘Bells’, which I thought was verging on the unfair, and I’m sure there was a version of ‘Strings Of Life’ in there somewhere too. It was the perfect music for the occasion, and when Jitterbug finished his set with E-Dancer’s ‘Heavenly’ it made a lot of sense. I’ve tried to explain to various people what it is about this track that gets to me so powerfully, but it’s hopeless really. It just ascends.
Efdemin in the main room looked as outer-planetary as I had been feeling – G didn’t recognise him at all, and I started doubting myself for a while too, but it was him. He was drenched and looked far away from this world, but his set was right there in the room, and it looped and pummelled. For about 15 minutes I thought it was the best I’d heard of the weekend, but then the volume got too tiring. More breaks outside in the shade of Wellington (who’d taken on a slightly sleazy aspect in the dark) led to some stargazing, before I tried going back in for, variously, the Hessle Audio showcase and Marcel Dettmann. The latter was too loud, and the former was still sauna-like. Also, on my way down from the hour-or-so’s freewheeling, the way the Hessle trio kept swinging between fun house and slightly serious stepping stuff served to take the wind out of me a bit. It took a return to the tent and an epic search for a usable toilet to remind me of the planned ramble, so it was 6 by the time E and I set off.
Sunday:
I call this the start of Sunday. We struck off up the path into the woods, over and up the quad-bike paths, and through a particularly sticky patch of nettles and brambles (sorry E). We hit a road, which led past some secluded and expensive-looking houses, before finally finding a grass verge up on the right promising higher ground out in the open air. Then we found the meadow on top of the plateau. On the way back down the road, the sunrise grew even more vivid, before we descended back down under cover of the trees. Then the view opened out to the right, away across the Wye Valley with its peculiarly geometrical fields and its solitary trees outlined against the sky on the opposite ridge. The road took us back down to the garage, from which we walked back to the entrance drive, past the comically hidden festival sign and along past the farthest reaches of the campsite. Some of the horses to the right were standing absolutely stock still – apparently horses sleep standing up? – and to the right the sun really was blazing.
We went and sat on a picnic bench on the lawn in front of the house and looked at the view for a good half an hour in silence. Lots of people were sitting out there taking it all in. I felt great. Later, I recaptured that loss of time sitting outside the cafe listening to Move D play a beautiful afternoon set of relaxed house. I was reading Slaughterhouse Five (I’m not really sure why) and drinking beer slowly, taking in the complete lack of tension in the air. It was lovely. XDB followed with a spacier and more propulsive set, that promised great things for the evening, but that somehow turned out to be the last of it really. I made a few more attempts at seeing things later on (Pigon in the main room, again too loud for me; a long wait for Jitterbug outside, but then I couldn’t maintain the energy) but ultimately the lure of the tent was too strong, and I enjoyed a largely uninterrupted night of smooth and contented sleep.
Monday:
Some of the others had to head off at some dreadful hour on the deep house bus back to London. I got up around 10 and sat in the cafe for a while drinking tea (that tea was fucking amazing) and eating a toasted sandwich. It looked like it could rain, so we took the tents down and packed the car. It didn’t rain – how could it? – and before I knew it we were back in Hereford. Then I went back to Birmingham for my birthday and now I’m back in London enjoying the sunset and thinking about my dissertation.
Freerotation was unlike any other festival I’ve been to. Everything was given room to breathe and I never felt directed or controlled. You could roam around, or happily stay in one place (say, the high-backed chairs halfway up the stairs). You could go for the loud music inside, or you could relax with the quieter music out in the cafe, or in our case you could just sit in the tent and listen to Jan Krueger mix Baby Ford into ‘Silent State’ into Furry Phreaks. That gives me the thing I need to sum it all up really – I heard ‘Silent State’ twice during the weekend, once in the tent on Friday night and once out in the afternoon glow on Sunday. Both times it sounded weightless, suspended in time, light as air. That’s how I felt out in the meadow as the sun rose, and that’s what Freerotation felt like as a whole. It was effortlessly enjoyable.