The Good, The Bad and The BLOC

Now that the dust has settled, the weird nightmares have subsided, apologies have been handed out and my eating habits are back to normal it’s time for a few words on what has become in just over a year and 2 parties, my favourite weekend of the year. The title was a dead give away, it is of course BLOC Weekend!

Last year had left me with seriously high expectations of the whole fandago, from the constant flow of good music, the smooth organisation and the hilarious debauchery that seeped out of every corner of the festival site right through till Monday morning. Moving site, increasing capacity and developing a somewhat broader appeal via a line up that, while it could not be termed commercial, was one slightly more accessible to the non-nerds out there, were a few changes that one could expect to have a substantial effect on the party. The moving site issue was quickly dispelled when we landed on site and saw that the new surroundings did not resemble plusher areas of a POW camp but were instead very pleasant, and had such novelties as hot water! Anyways, big deal, they were going to end up looking like a bomb hit them by the end of the weekend. On to the music…

By the time we got settled, had a few beers and sought out whatever else was needed sorting out (eh, pizza for our bellys), Centre:Bloc was the first port of call. Q-Bert was just finishing up and by the time I’d gotten a beer he was gone, and it was time for some good old Miami bass from Dynamix II which was a kick ass way to start off the festival. There are so many times these days that “real” electro (yes, I went there) falls on deaf ears in Dublin clubs and people don’t get down, it was a joy to have hundreds going off. But once that finished I noticed that due to the scheduling of the Friday night there was nothing on for at least 3 hours that I’d any real interest in. Dubstep may be a hugely popular genre at the moment but there are some of us out there who don’t actually like it! I went down to the Tec:Bloc arena and caught Joker & Blazey ( with names like that, ten years ago they would have been d’n’b djs, no doubt) doing a back to back set that was ok for the first ten minutes or so before the first “wobble” dropped. The place went apeshit, but maybe in the same way others find a 303 squelch the most boring sound on the planet, thats how I feel about the dubstep wobble.

So I wandered off and tried to make my way to see Hudson Mohawke, but as is the BLOC way I got distracted by just fucking about bumping into mates and messing (this happens a lot at BLOC). Before I knew it Dan Bell was already on so I legged it back to the main stage and caught one of my favourite sets of the weekend. Deep minimal techno was the order of the day with the odd smattering of house, and even though he seemed like an odd choice for that time of the party (03.30, with Ben Sims and Surgeon to follow) he kept pretty much everyone glued to the floor. Frequency 7, aka Sims and Surgeon were up next and even though it was pretty fun, from my experience they work better on their own. They weren’t shying away from playing some party tunes and a few classics such as Infiniti – Game one, but it didn’t exactly blow my mind. And their last tune was Outlander – Vamp which I can’t stand, even though it nearly took the roof off the room.

I didn’t get around to seeing any more music until around 7.30 the next night, yet I only managed about an hours sleep. To try and convey the fun had hoping around from chalet to chalet getting, to be brutally frank, extremely fucked up over the course of Saturday afternoon is a bit pointless. You just have to be there. Half the fun (if not more this year) of BLOC is outside of the music arenas. Due to having proper chalets to hang out in the parties last longer and are harder than at a camping festival. No having to go watch some shitty acts cause its pissing rain or getting a numb arse sitting on grass, drinking warm beer. BLOC also attracts a fantastic crowd, which didn’t change even though it’s capacity doubled this year. You don’t have to worry about trouble makers and as cheesy as it sounds, everyone is on the same wavelength. Pretty much any gaps in times in the rest of my review is due to getting sidetracked and ending  up back in a chalet for another party.

Saturday night definitely held more of an appeal for me and while due to the aformentioned reason – and also because I did have to get a proper sleep at some stage – I still missed out on Cosmic Force, James Ruskin and most of Redshape. Also Rob Hood was clashing with AFX/Hecker and when I left Egyptian Lover – as brilliant as ever, his 808 sounded insanely good on the Centre:Bloc soundsystem – there were massive queues for AFX so I decided I wasn’t going to bother trying to get back in at any stage, before or after Hood. The reports I got of AFX/Hecker were mixed, some said it blew their minds, others thought it was tedious noise and clattered beats (but in surround sound!) and not all that special. Jumping back a little in time, it would be unfair not to mention Rob Hall’s brilliant set in the Tec:Bloc earlier in the evening. Along with Surgeon he is probably my favourite laptop DJ, as he manages to build up  tension and excitement and the odd What The Fuck moment that is sorely missing from too many laptop DJ Sets. It was mostly harsh broken beat and electro fare, and the place went crazy when he perfectly timed in some pounding 4/4 beats at the end.

So, moving back in to later Saturday night, Rob Hood took to the stage of the Tilted Disco/Split party at around 1am. He was playing a full hardware liveset which I really enjoyed from start to finish. It’s no doubt a less intense experience than his DJ sets which was also reflected by many in the crowds reaction. Stopping between every song at 1am in the morning, when the crowd have been at it since early evening, was not the wisest idea, and I think the schedulers got it wrong putting him on then. Redshape followed and from what I saw was doing nothing wrong, but I’d pretty much been on the go since Friday morning at this stage and my body could take no more.

For the unawares Sunday was to be big party day with their annual fancy dress having a Miami Vice theme this year and a series of acts lined up to soundtrack it with Italo and old school electro. With the closure of the tec:bloc after Saturday and the later opening of the other arenas Sunday afternoon gave us some time to sleep/eat/clean etc and generally get our heads together in the sun. You can find a party at any time of the day or night at BLOC but at some stage you just have to relax for a while, so it may as well be when there is hardly any music on.  So after some sun-time it was time for some Edmx action who kicked off the precedings with a brilliant party set. Street Dance, Clear, Egypt Egypt, Plastic Doll, The Chase and many other classics got an airing and Ed’s obvious enjoyment only helped fuel the party atmosphere. Not many other Dj’s could get away with getting on the mic and singing Human League’s “Don’t You Want Me, Baby” while pulling ridiculous dance moves behind the decks. The whole set was one of the highlights of the weekend.

Dutch legend I-f was up next and started his set with his re-edit of Michael Jackson’s Thriller that is something he really needs to drop from his set. It’s cool but he plays it every single time. Give it up Ferenc. The arrival of some ludicrously appareled cross-dressing stage dancers distracted us though and while some of his set followed the same predictable arc of his first track I was pleasantly surprised to hear his own “Space Invaders are Smoking Grass” being followed by Alden Tyrell’s “Hills of Honolulu”. By the end of his set the floor was really going off. Next up it was the turn of Italo pioneer Alexander Robotnick to…fuck everything up. I’d spotted him in the crowd for Edmx and I-f’s sets so I don’t know what he was thinking by playing rubbish trancy electro house. He completely killed the atmosphere and I left after 15 minutes and headed back for some more chalet shenanigans. I returned a couple of hours later to discover that Metro Area had missed their flight and in their place Joe Hart and Agent B would be filling in. It turned out to be a blessing in disguise and they rose to the challenge and provided one of the highlights of the festival moving from some less obvious italo – including Kano’s It’s a War, a personal all time favourite – to culminating in some brilliant electro including E.R.P’s superb Hardfloor remix from late last year. Sadly Afrika Bambatta decided it was his turn to fuck things up, and even though he played Salt n’ Pepa’s Push It, the other cheesy nonsense such as MC Hammer was too much and I left. So much for a classic hip hop and electro set. You always run a risk booking these sort of legends who haven’t done anything of note in donkey’s years and this was an example of it going drastically wrong. At this stage most of the other music was finished and I didn’t bother returning for Carl Craig’s closing set as I predicted, quite rightly, that it would be full of over-played big Detroit tunes. As amazing a song as Knights of the Jaguar is, a smaller dj would get berated for opening their set with it.

Similarly to Friday where Dubstep was to be found everywhere, they’d decided to schedule London’s Italo promoters Cocadisco in another arena when all this 80’s shenanigans was going on in the main room, which I don’t think was the smartest move. You have to stay pretty focused to run from arena to arena to catch what you want, and when there is a lot on you want to see at roughly the same time it can be easy to get distracted by partying with your friends, as the easier but just as entertaining alternative. It wasn’t wall to wall Italo though, as Benga and Skream b2b, 4 Hero and Altern 8 were playing at other stages on Sunday evening. But I wasn’t being paid to spend the weekend trying to see everything going on and as with any festival you’re not gonna see it all, whatever your levels of commitment are.

So, overall the weekend was a success. Musically, I have to say, it lacked any really standout performance such as Monolake or Convextion last year. You won’t find me rabbiting on about any one set for the next coming months like I was with those, and they need to cut back on the Dubstep. Even some dubstep fans I was talking to were disappointed by the level of quality of it, and the scheduling of Friday was far too dependent on the idea that everyone wanted to hear it. We didn’t. Aside from the music, you’ll be hard pressed to spend a weekend having so much fun anywhere. The people, the atmosphere, the professionalism with which the festival is run meant you hardly bumped into anyone who didn’t have a grin (or gurn) on their face througout the weekend. The worst thing about BLOC is having to leave and waking up the day after and realising you have to wait another year for it come back around again.

Finally a couple more things: Good to finally put a face to Meschi from here, would have chatted more but when we met I (and you too i think) was too busy getting down. Lina: your sitting room table was asking me to collapse all over it, I saw it looking funny at me. Big shout out to my chalet crew, and the revellers who made what should have been a miserable bus journey back to Bristol on Monday one of the funniest couple of hours of the weekend.