My first day at Blip Europe by glomag

My spider-sense is tingling...

Aalborg, DK 072309

Chip musicians were arriving all day on Friday like flies attracted to shit. Luckily there was a very large spider present to capture us all (see picture)

Sweden is well represented here amongst performers and attendees. Jonas from Microdisko (the best drinking partner ever,) had helped promote the event. He found us at the hostel in the early afternoon and we headed over to the venue for sound checks. Another nice surprise: Divag, who I had met years ago at a show in Paris made it up here as well with his girlfriend. Psilodump showed up during sound check as did Covox.

I missed Bu Bu Kitty Fuckers, as I was upstairs preparing my set. I hear that they were inspired and fun. Kaspar from BBKF later jumped off the stage during Covox and badly injured his ankle, poor guy. Rabato was second with video by Raquel Meyers, who joined him onstage. The high point in this excellent set was “Repair No Detail,” a song with a melody line that never gives you as much as you want, leaving you needing to hear it again immediately. Raquel\’s visuals were fantastic and so well matched to the music.

During Rabato\’s set M-.-n and Anita arrived and the dancing began. Next up was Minusbaby who performed his new masterpiece, “Left,” a 21 minute opus of crunchy love. Although the audience were not quite warmed up yet, there was dancing. I came on after Minusbaby and played a set with more new material than I have in over a year. I started with Red Pixel Dust as the marvelous C-Men ran a pixel-ized version of the climax scene from “Once Upon A Time in The West.” Crisis struck in the middle of my last song, a cover of The Pixies\’ “Mr. Grieves.” Entangled cables pulled a game boy off the table, shutting the console off. It couldn\’t have happened at a worse place in the song. I recovered quickly but it really marred the experience for me. I made up for it with more beer and dancing to Covox who was up next.

Covox, newly post-DMG, delivered a blazing set with his laptop, minimal effects and mixer. The crowd was now really moving. Nullsleep followed him with hard hitting versions of his classics, new classics (Shadows in the Sky, ftw) and a new track that rocked hard. Berne and Dragan from Bodenstandig hit the festival in the midst of “Wave Function Collapse.” Champion dancers Luisa, Mark & Anita, Rabato, Raquel, Jonas and video artist Rosa Menkman provided more fun.

Goto 80 also delivered a great set with quite a few cool vocal tracks. Raquel brought the visuals again. Last was Binaerpilot, whom none of us (Americans) had ever seen live. His tracks were wildly dancey with some nice melodies and timing changes. C-Men was on visuals with a crazy skull motif.

The designers of the space did a pretty exceptional job, hijacking a large spider structure from a nearby public space and creating some interesting jagged, “pixelated” projection surfaces. We have the largest backstage area I have ever seen. The entire second floor is shared between the artists, the production team and the press. It\’s a cavernous space in a warehouse sitting within a huge abandoned complex of a grain processing and storage facility. Wandering around the area was loads of fun. Sad that we never had a chance to take the artist pictures outside the silos that we planned.

We were invited to an “after party” by Kaspar of Bu Bu Kitty Fuckers, who had sprained his ankle as I mentioned earlier. By the time we rounded up people to go, most had succumbed to sleep. So with Receptors, Cheap Dinosaurs, Jonas, myself, Bit Shifter and Hally, we bought more beer at a 7 Eleven and partied at Kaspar\’s house. The trip back to the hotel at about 6am was interesting, with much shouting, laughing kicking things, chasing a jack rabbit down the middle of a street and other general acts of stupidity. In other words, a great time.

More soon about the second night when I get a chance. It rocked.