Eclipse 2007 was a blast! Now established as Eastern Canada’s largest psytrance festival, Eclipse seems to get better and better with every passing year. The world-class line-up included Koxbox, Tegma, Protoculture, and James Monro, all of whom performed excellent sets over the course of the weekend. As expected, the sound system was extremely powerful, but not at the expense of clarity; every sound was pure and pristine! This was brought home on Saturday night, when one of the DJs slipped in a classic tune from Tim Schuldt—it sounded so strong that no one would have known it was nearly a decade old.

Main Stage, Friday Night: DJ Mini

SumKidz Stage, Friday Night

Initially I was not entirely convinced that the new location at Mont Radar was as appealing as the luscious slopes of the Bonnet Rouge—home to the last two festivals—but I changed my mind after finding an ideal camping spot in the labyrinthine forest directly opposite the main stage. On-site amenities included showers and a small lake for swimming, innumerable kiosks offering everything from black-light fashion to cosmic tea, several eateries, and a bar. Once again, Eclipse was very well organized—the entry process was streamlined, security was low-key, and the extra charge for parking wasn’t all that much of a hassle.

Main Stage Visual Control Centre

Main Stage, Friday Night: DJ Horizon

The flow of the music over the course of the weekend was particularly well-planned this year. DJ Mini dropped some excellent electro house to kick things off on Friday night (on vinyl, no less), followed by some killer techtrance from DJ Solar. Horizon ripped into the harder side of full-on, building the night properly. As dawn was breaking, Tegma took the stage to perform an invigorating blend of worldly progressive trance and brash electro. The live element was expressed through the use of a small controller box; snare rolls and other percussive effects were thrown in to accentuate breakdowns and spice up their irresistible rhythms. Stefan later raised the energy levels with his trademark style of melodic morning-time full-on, and the dance floor kept on jumping straight into the afternoon.

Saturday Morning: Tegma Live Set

As with any outdoor festival, the weather can make or break the experience. Friday night was a close call; we were treated to a stunning lightning show under the rising moon as an immense thunderstorm passed perpendicular to the festival grounds. Cloud cover persisted into the next day, shielding us all from the sun—a welcome reprieve. As darkness fell on Saturday evening the sky finally opened up, drenching Mont Radar with a monumental downpour that continued into the deep hours of the night. Luckily, the sound quality was unaffected, and many festival-goers enjoyed FM Radio Gods, Yann, and Koxbox from the confines of their tents. I ventured out for a short while to witness the hellacious deluge pummel all the freaks down at the main stage, but it was too much after a while, and I returned to the dark forest for some rest before Sunday morning.

Sunday Morning: Dancing In The Mud

Muddy Speakers

Once the rain let up, everyone came out to enjoy the vast rivers of mud that remained. The dance floor at the main stage was especially filthy; even with my rubber boots on, I was sinking at least a foot into the muck at some points. While I did not care for Pixel’s live set (it was terribly cheesy, especially with that hit sample mega-mix near the end), Protoculture delivered an excellent set perfectly suited for the morning hours. I am not certain how live it was, but ending with that unreleased remix of Binary Finary’s 1998 was a nice touch. Afterwards, James Monro’s extended DJ set was a delight to my ears; it is very rare for me to hear such skillful DJing! Monro smoothly transitioned from pumping progressive to electro breaks and back, blending beats and making proper use of the crossfader. I would not hesitate to dub Monro’s set the best of the festival.

I missed the final night of the festival, but heard good things from all those who stayed. The rest of my photos are available in the gallery. More reviews, photos, and videos can be found at Psyfreaks, Rave.ca, Ravezone (en français), Froggystyle.ca (photos), Tribe Magazine, and Youtube.

The inaugural Moon Dance Festival, originally scheduled to take place in Quebec on the weekend of August 18th, has been cancelled. The organizer cites difficulties in securing land, a lack of support, and certain other concerns. There is a chance Deviant Species (the original headliner) will return in the fall for a one-night indoor event to make up for it. For those who have already purchased tickets, refunds are likely to be available, but there is no concrete information as of yet.

With Moon Dance no longer taking place, the remainder of the summer season in Eastern Canada is wide open (excepting, of course, next weekend’s Eclipse Festival). If anyone was thinking of hosting something in late August, this is a golden opportunity to step in and make it happen.

Update: Bonni is holding a small outdoor event on crown land amusingly titled “Faeries Gone Wild” that same weekend. Details can be found on the Psyfreaks forum. The Peterborough-based collective has also stepped in to host a small festival in Ontario called Ignition on the August 24th weekend.

Now is the time to begin planning for the upcoming summer festival season in North America! Be sure to check out the 2007 North American Summer Psy Festival Guide recently posted at di.onys.us. Updates will be forthcoming as more information is released by the various promoters holding events this year. While most dates have been announced already, there are bound to be a few small-scale festivals sprouting up as we roll into June and July, so keep your ear to the ground. In addition to the extensive continent-wide guide linked above, here is a list of festivals currently posted on Ektoplazm:

Gaian Mind :: June 21/22/23/24 (Central Pennsylvania)
Entheos :: June 22/23/24/25 (Cherryville, B.C.)
Space Gathering :: July 6/7/8/9 (near Montreal, Quebec)
Motion Notion :: July 12/13/14/15 (Drayton Valley, Alberta)
Alladin Orb Festival :: July 12/13/14 (Echo Lake, New York)
Eclipse :: July 27/28/29/30 (St-Sylvestre, Quebec)
Moon Dance :: August 17/18/19 (near Montreal, Quebec)
Harvest :: September 22/23 (somewhere in Ontario)

This year, I personally recommend attending Entheos (B.C.), Eclipse (Quebec), and Harvest (Ontario). If you have not yet experienced a good open-air psytrance festival, you have no idea what you’re missing!

In just a few weeks I will be heading westward for Entheos 2007. Recently, representatives of the festival made a media release which I thought pertinent to highlight:

From June 22nd to 25th, 2007, the Entheos Summer Solstice Conference and Festival will be held near the scenic Okanagan town of Cherryville, British Columbia.

Entheos will be a showcase of the latest in intelligent electronic music, visionary art, and digital age information. This festival will appeal especially to those who appreciate technology, intellectual exchange, cooperation, consciousness, and an optimistic view of the future. The word “Entheos” is Greek for “the divine within.”

Two stages will feature a variety of flavours of carefully selected new electronic music as well as professional level visual projections and decor design. The lineup includes several internationally known artists including headliner Human Blue from Sweden (www.humanblue.se) and representation from cutting edge artistic communities from the West Coast and beyond.

Daytime conference presentations include topics related to new media, cultural evolution, the power of shared intent, shamanic dance, and how sound frequencies can invoke biologically beneficial brain and body states. The proceedings are more than just lectures and are designed to provide an energetic experience to all participants.

Entheos has been consciously created with environmental concerns in mind, including attention to the gathering’s impact on the land and the intelligent generation and conservation of energy resources towards future sustainability.

For the full text of the media release as well as musical line-up and other details, visit the full event listing here on Ektoplazm or check out the Entheos Gathering home page.

Sanaton Records, an underground label from Sweden specializing in ultra-psychedelic “forest” music, has just announced the release of their third compilation: Holocryptic Audio. It features tracks from Ka-Sol, Procs, Hallucinogenic Horses (a Derango side project), Zik, and others. This release completes the “Audio” trilogy of compilations that began with Boldly Audio and continued with Sanatonic Audio. It will not be available in stores; as an independent label, Sanaton Records handles their own distribution. Limited to 400 copies, Holocryptic Audio can only be purchased direct from the label. Should you enjoy the richly organic forest style this is not one to miss—visit the label’s homepage (where samples are available) or check out this thread on Isratrance for more information as well as some early feedback.

After the recent success of ultra-melodic dance floor anthems like Ghost In Goa, Overload (included here), and Roswell Mania, Talamasca is back with a massive new release! In an incredibly bold move, Mind Control Records are offering Talamasca’s brand new double-CD album “Obsessive Dream” for free download in MP3 format direct from their site. As they say, “at Mind Control Records, we are thinking differently. MP3 is a wonderful tool for promotion, and also, it is the best way for an artist to spread his music all over the world!!!” Talamasca also chimes in with a few gracious words:

To give this album on MP3 is for me the best way to say thank you to all the people who have enjoyed my music in the past ten years, who have discovered it recently, or for those who will enjoy it n the future!!!

Shockingly, it isn’t even available in stores yet! Links will be provided to the major shops whenever they begin stocking the physical release. In the meantime, if you enjoy the full-on side of psychedelic trance, don’t miss this!

In anticipation of the release of their fifth album Free To Listen, ManMadeMan are giving away their first two albums in MP3 format on their web site. Lovetechnology, originally released on Flying Rhino Records in 2000, and Cell Division, released with Transient two years later, are both free for your listening pleasure. I hear a rumour that WAV copies might be available as well—but there is nothing to report as of yet.

Interested? Visit their homepage or Myspace page and be sure to check out Free To Listen!

Have you ever wondered what those big name acts are actually doing up on stage at a party? Usually the answer is “not much.” Very few psytrance acts are genuinely live in any sense of the word; most simply play their material straight from a laptop without making any kind of effort to bring a live element into their show. Is it really fair to advertise a headliner as “live” if they do little more than hit play on their computer? This has become the subject of an ongoing scene-wide debate frequently carried out on message forums and email lists.

Enter Tom Cosm, an independent producer and live performer from New Zealand on a mission to show people how it’s done. With sly promotional acumen, he has posted a rant on his web site (as well as Isratrance) throwing down his two cents on the matter. As interesting as that is, his comments are merely a pretext to posting up an instructive video in which Tom demonstrates his own personal method of playing live. More on that:

The video is about half an hour long and covers quite a range of methods used for performing live using a laptop, midi controllers and a synthesizer. The intro goes on a little about me and my music, then it gets into the depths of how I perform live, and finishes with a short montage of clips I have gathered from various gigs I have done in the past.

The video is not deeply technical; any electronic music fan should be able to follow what Tom is talking about. This is an entry-level exposition of live performance techniques that is at once informative and accessible. Tom Cosm has performed a noble deed in having this video made, for an informed audience is exactly what is needed to address the issue of falsely advertised “live” sets in the psychedelic underground. Watch it here:

This video is also available on Youtube in five parts: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5

One more word from the artist:

As always, I encourage you to pass this information on if you are into it or think you know of anyone who might be interested in watching. I always have and continue to give all my music away for free, so the whole word of mouth is how I promote myself and get gigs.

If this is new to you and your interested in checking out my music, there are some completely free live sets on my website as well as photos/news/upcoming gigs etc.

Nicely done!