FREEDOM FESTIVAL 2007 REVIEW

It’s a bit late for a review of a festival that was made at almost 4 months ago, but believe me, it was so wonderful that I think I have to do it, late or not.

The second edition of Freedom Festival happened from 16 to 20 of August in Elvas – Portugal, at a paradisiacal and crystalline lake called Barragem do Monte da Chaminé.
This edition was organized by a collaboration of two of the most important and well known labels in our psychedelic culture, namely Crystal Matrix Records and Hommega Productions (the last one celebrating her tenth anniversary) and was with almost 11000 people from all corners of the world.

When you entered in the festival, you feel that sensation that you were at a village, not like the normal ones, but more psychedelic, more beautiful and with lots of more energy. There were all the things there that you can find at a normal village/city, like restaurants with all kinds of food, bars, internet place, mini hospital, firemen’s, lots of fluor shops, Check In tent (a Portuguese organization that does drug-tests and help people that are not having a good time), WC, showers, etc…



The camping zone was divided by two sides, one for the vans and other for the tents…the two sides were with some illumination for the night and lots of trees with shade for the day, which is completely important for a festival at Portugal in August (almost 40 degrees at day time).



The mainfloor was completely amazing; it has a big stage where live acts and djs played, a powerful and fat Norton Sound system, some big covers getting shade for almost 80% of the floor that together with the water coming from shower-tubes and almost 20 showers at 100 meters from the stage putted all the people refreshed.



At night the decoration was completely magic, full of lasers everywhere and with really nice images going on a big screen in real time, made by some of the best Vjs. Speaking about the artists, of course I didn’t see all of it (completely impossible) but from the ones that I listened, in general, I think we had sounds from all tastes of trance music. At night, I really enjoy Absolum, really psychedelic and energetic, the dj set from Kuntact was nice too, Shift, Azax Syndrom, Slug and I didn’t listen many more because it was always the part of the day that I choose to sleep...



At morning time, I enjoy almost all the artists that played all the days, but my favorites was without any doubt Sirius Isness, Astrix, D_Maniac (showing a completely different and powerful sound), Vibe Tribe, Bizzare Contact, Eskimo, etc…



At the progressive/electro afternoon’s, I enjoyed Beckers, Goetz, Atmos, Sally Doolally, Peter Didgital but my favorite was undoubtedly Ace Ventura, either the live or the dj set, he putted all the crowd that was and wasn’t there dancing :)



The chillout stage was really nice too, all the nights was full of people but at day time was not so many because it was really hot inside; the stage was nice, like Boom Festival 2004 mainfloor but in small size, with nice visuals, lots of ashtrays, pillows…from the artists that I saw, the ones that I enjoyed more was Shulman, Solar Fields and Aes Dana.





The cultural area was inside a circus tent and had lots of different projects; it has some conferences and workshops, regarding Permaculture, Astrology, Shamanic Ritual, Yoga, Meditation, Ecology, etc, some nice concerts of world music (Olivetree really rocked) and at the beginning of all nights we had a cinema session with a nice selection of psychedelic movies.



There was a Healing area too, where you found really nice massages and some Reiki therapies.
Negative aspects I didn’t find so many, but I think the showers could work at all hours of the day because it was really hot there, the lake should be bigger (it was the only bad thing in the location) because after the second day the water was not so clear and there was some stolen things too but I think it\'s normal when you talk about a festival of 11000 people.



In general, this was undoubtedly my favorite festival of this summer…the music was really good, the ambient and atmosphere was superb, the location was awesome…I was too at the 2005 edition and saw that the Freedom team worked a lot more on this one, I think every single person that was here didn’t had a bad time for sure…When the festival ended, you could saw two faces in each person, a happy and smiling one for all the good energies that were achieved and lived in that week and a sadly one, just for the fact that the festival was ending…for the more lucky ones was the After Freedom festival one week after.

10/10

Pedro Gaspar aka Dj Juggler

www.myspace.com/djjuggler