A special holiday...

Fusion festival 2007 - a critical view back

There are this certain holidays people are looking for the whole year. While for more civic people this might be their birthday or x-mas, for quite a few persons from the electronic scene it is the last weekend in June. More precisely: The last Thursday in June. Because on this weekend a very special festival is held every year on an old soviet airport in the heart of Mecklenburg, a northern state of Germany. Fusion festival for sure is a very, very special event no person who ever went there can negate this. There are quite a few things that make this gathering unique: The location with all its hangars you can climb on and have a view on the whole festival area. The people who are composed of multi coloured hippies, posh minimal fans, even more coloured psytrance freaks, old school punks and almost every other subcultural lifeform. The program which includes theatre, cabaret, a large amount of performances, workshops, cinema, radio plays and so much more. And last but not least the music which features a large variety of sound reaching from brand new minimal techno, electro and drum´n´bass, psytrance and breakbeats to reggae, ska and punkrock. This curious cocktail is presented in a very alternative way, for example the stages are not rock- show like oversized but small tents, not reaching out very high over the dancefloor, the artists seem to be touchable for everyone. Streets in the camping area are named like “Karl Marx alley” or “Che Guevara path”... All together a really remarkable concept with hundreds of people being involved into the organisation and composition.

Also for me as a hedonistic freelancer travelling around quite heavily in the Europe festival sphere this event is always special and a date to look forward for. This year was the sixth time I visited Fusion and after having an really excellent party on No Mans Land festival in Hungary just one weekend before my expectations were even higher. To say it right in the beginning: Again it was a really great party, I really enjoyed this weekend. The music was great as it always used to be, I met so many friends from everywhere and even the weather which is pretty fucked up since a while here in Germany was pretty ok. For sure this was another party to remember, you will find a lot of euphoric reviews everywhere on the web and I totally agree with all this applauding articles in some way. But for I went there not the first time and realized some certain changes since a few years I will take this opportunity for some critics.

I started party on Thursday evening on Turmbühne where Steve Bug played his already classical Thursday- evening set. The music was definitely great! The floor was that much packed that I myself did not feel the difference from partying in one of the hangars which had always been crowded like a tuna tin. A little too much people for my taste, real dancing was impossible and you had no real control in which direction you were moved by the crowd. But this was not the critical point. Within half an hour I was dissed twice because I stepped one someone's foot and twice a dude appeared next to me just 10 seconds after smiling at a beautiful girl and advised me that this was his girlfriend... Sorry, but this is not the relaxed party I want to have!

I want to call a few other things which drew my attention in a negative way that weekend. For example already on Friday you could see worse- done tags from some silly hip hop kids everywhere on the area. Even the projection screens had been polluted by this. An interessting indicator for the audience walking around there and especially for the state of mind of this audience... The amount of trash lying around is another one and increases every year. On Sunday morning at some places it really smelled like a garbage dump mixed with urine smell... really disgusting. The trash was collected by quite a few party people who worked on the festival site. In fact this is another special of Fusion, people can come there and earn the money for a ticket by doing a six hour shift working. At least it used to be like this... This year people only got 30 euros for working six hours while the ticket was 55 euros. In my opinion this is not ok, people should really get the opportunity to earn the money for the whole entry in six hours, especially because some of the work is really hard. Also at the bars I realized a certain change: The price of the drinks now does not differ from a normal, not cheap club price. This used to be different a few years ago, too.

The trancefloor at Fusion is a really nice one, surrounded by trees and a little bit sloping to the stage. Of course nature is the best decorator, in fact this year there was not really much other decoration. In my opinion the stage looked really poor this year with not even one backdrop.

All together I have to say: Again it was a really good party. I met dozens of friends and freaks , heard some really nice and inspiring music and had a lot of fun. So this exercise was definitely successful ;)

As a sophisticated party freak I have to say that I do not like more and more increasing prices, decreasing decorations and more and more uneasy, overstyled and ignorant people. Definitely some factors that can be watched increasing at Fusion festival from year to year. But in the end the positive aspects still overweight the negative ones. At the moment...

The grandmaster of massive partying, Mr. Sam@chaishop.com himself has hit the bull´s eye again in a very pregnant article- check it out!