My first experience at the ZNA Gathering in 2015 was stellar. Several old-school artists whom I’d admired for decades were there to give performances, some of them (like Slinky Wizard and Crop Circles) performing live for the first time. My own morning set – between the two aforementioned artists (a bit of video here) – was wonderfully received by a lovely group of partiers, and I couldn’t have had a better time with the crew, musicians, and party-goers. I had a rather serious fall in my hotel room on my last day in Portugal but this near-death experience didn’t deter me from wanting to go back for another ZNA experience! 

I was of course delighted to be asked back for 2017 – an invitation I received while still on location in 2015 – and I knew I would be in for a great time. My good friend Federico Draeke, founder and owner of DAT Records, was going to be playing in the pre-party Goa Guardians flow, and the main line-up also included Eat Static, The Infinity Project (with Graham Wood), Man With No Name, X-Dream, Transwave, Oforia, and a bunch of other names familiar to fans of 90s Goa music, great artists whose music I’d been listening to before I started DJ’ing. All signs pointed to it being a phenomenal event.

The build-up to ZNA is always exciting and even this fact reminds me of parties in the 90s, when going to and from the event was part of the party experience, much in the same way that the intro and outro of a track in the 90s was an integral part of the musical story. In the months leading up to this edition of ZNA, I had been uploading Throwback Thursday posts on the Gathering’s Facebook page, presenting top tracks from back in the 90s with some insights into the music and the artists. And of course for a long time I had been considering what I might play at the event, preparing a pretty long ‘short list’ of tracks that might fit in the time slot of my set. The organizers and I had been in touch long before the official line-up was released to discuss their hopes for my set, which was for me to serve as a night-time bridge between Eat Static’s opening set and Element Over Nature. After my having played a daytime set the previous time, it seemed appropriate to have me play at night (a nice balance of Yin and Yang between these two events), and the team believed that my versatility would help me to craft a varied night-time journey.

Fortunately Federico and I had quite coincidentally booked flights that arrived in Lisbon within an hour of one another, so we were able to meet up at the airport. Both our flights ended up being a bit delayed, and although he was supposed to arrive before me he in fact arrived after, but we found each other quite easily. As we were arranging to go into town after getting our phones loaded up with local SIM cards, we happened to bump into some of our lovely global Goa community at the airport: Despina and Mike from Greece with Alexander from Russia, a lovely group that Fede only knew via the net but all of whom I’d met two years earlier at the previous edition – although we didn’t realize at the time that it was Alexander’s birthday, it was a lovely get-together before Fede and I made our way into town to have a day in Lisbon before heading to the festival the following day.

After a terrific day and evening in town, which included having both lunch and dinner with Rich Bloor (former manager of TIP Records) and his kids, we made our way back to the airport to catch our shuttle to the festival. Along for the ride were Ward aka Inada from Belgium and TB303 from Germany, and we were whisked along by a lookalike of Maurizio from Etnica/Pleiadians whose rapid driving had even our Italian passenger thinking the speed was somewhat extreme  We settled into our room – Fede and I had organized a Casa de DAT Records setup with the promoters since we were both staying for the whole festival – and then we scoped out the territory, with Fede using his Italian seductive charms and skilled Portuguese (more than my ‘bom dia’) with the older landlady so that we could get what we needed for our rooms (she was pretty much preening herself every time she saw Fede from then on). We managed to get some food from a not-so-nearby supermarket so that we could hunker down and do some work: Fede had his set the next morning, and I had mine the next night, so we wanted to relate to the music while immersing ourselves in the spirit of the festival now that we were on ‘holy land,’ even if we were not yet on-site.

We got an early morning shuttle to the festival in order to get into the vibe prior to Federico’s set. The Goa Guardians night was taking place as a pre-party event at what would be the ambient stage for the festival. As we approached I could hear the strains of one of my all-time favourite tracks, Asterope by Pleiadians. I knew that Sara (aka Psara) had hoped to play it (we discussed this prior to my arrival in Lisbon) but she had been scheduled to play earlier than the current time (we had expected Kyriakos aka DJ Sunborn to be on the decks). Sure enough, there had been a schedule delay so Sara was indeed playing the track – a great welcome to two representatives of the label that rereleased this gem of a track and released an alternate live mix (Sara was playing a terrific mashup she made of both versions)! I got to meet up with some of the Unreleased Goa crew whom I’d met last time and also whom I hadn’t yet met – Despina, Kyriakos, and Vas – as well as the Suntrip crew of Joske and Fabien. We had a good dance and got in the vibe and Kyriakos got behind the decks once Sara and I had a focused time making sure that the Traktor console was working precisely on his computer, as per the photo here (contrary to popular belief, we weren’t ordering pizza online). I wandered around the festival (hopeful of gluten-free pizza since our computerized order had apparently failed) in order to get familiar with the grounds and came back in time for Federico’s set.

Since we both represent DAT Records and share much of our collection, even though we have different styles, Fede and I had some conversations in advance about certain special tracks we’d hoped to play so that our sets wouldn’t duplicate each others’: he wanted to play the Code S9 remix that we’d finally uncovered 17 years after I heard it in France, whereas I was fine to play the original in my set… it was more appropriate for him to play the Doof desk mix of Angelic Particles since it was better suited for his morning set and for me to play the original at night since it can lend itself better to a darker environment. The vibes were fantastic during his set and I had a brilliant time hearing some tracks that I know hadn’t been played before and seeing how much they were being enjoyed as Fede weaved his story.

Once he was done and the heat was blazing, I needed to head back to the camp to get myself ready – it was 12 hours before my set, but I had lots to do. Before leaving, I met Jungle Jim, who had just arrived. He had been a mainstay at all the London parties when I was living there 96-98 and he chose to attend ZNA at my suggestion and that of Martin Man With No Name (Jim is a friend of a great many artists) …  talk about a real throwback! Jim had been at the first set I’d ever played for anyone, at a house party in London in late 1996/early 1997: on that occasion, a few people were taking turns behind the decks and I just casually put on one track after another, and next thing we knew, 4 hours had passed. (Jim would on the second day of ZNA comment that he was happy that he had been at both my first ever set and then my most recent one 21 years later!) Back at the accommodations, I got some food, had a bit more of a nap before a little more practice, and then wanted to get back to the festival in plenty of time for my set. I didn’t get as much rest as I’d hoped but felt better after some practice, and I got my shuttle back to the festival… with a bit of a detour to the restaurant that was a hub for artists, run by the folks who were taking care of the artists’ accommodation.

Tiago at the restaurant was doing a great job of coordinating multiple details and asked if I could wait a bit as Merv from Eat Static, who was playing before me, was arriving shortly and needed to be escorted to the festival too. How could I say no? Especially when Tiago brought me a great espresso right to the air-conditioned van… and then lo and behold, who should show up in a shuttle but Graham Wood, along with my friend Kunal from India (also a DAT Records DJ, ‘Tree Tribe’). So we had a great little catch-up there before Merv’s truck arrived. Merv had had a mishap at a festival in the Netherlands the previous week – his equipment was held up by British Airways and he couldn’t play one of his sets as a result – so he DROVE to ZNA from there with a friend of his, two days non-stop. We took off for the festival at breakneck speed – on dusty, windy roads leading to the back entrance.

I dropped my bag at the stage while Merv started setting up and I wandered around to meet some friends and calm my nerves prior to the festival beginning. And I bumped into quite a few: Ray Castle, whom I’d last seen in Japan earlier in the year not long after he’d visited the ZNA crew in Portugal, the Manmademan family, Fabien from Suntrip together with Vas, and Kris from UX, who re-introduced me to some guys who’d lived in my neighbourhood in London with mutual friends some 20 years ago and whom I hadn’t seen since. Fabien and Vas kept me relatively calm over dinner with some metaphysical talk about DJing, parties, sets, etc – I can keep talking about this stuff until I’m told to shut up – and that helped me get in the groove of what I would be doing later on.

Merv’s set-up took longer than expected, simultaneous with some sound issues, so the whole schedule was likely going to be pushed back an hour. I got my stuff set up on the side of Merv’s massive pile of equipment and left them to it. By the time things finally started an hour late, Ray’s opening speech was truncated to just a few minutes (he was joined by someone else who spoke and laughed for a couple of minutes too) and then Merv launched into it – first slower tempo music and then he got pretty full speed. I had planned on going a bit deeper, slower, and groovier than where he was at, and considered my options – to shift gears or not…?

As my start time of 11 (previously scheduled for 10) approached, I got myself backstage and decided to go with my intended shift of gears into a slower, groovier, trippier sound to build up and go through some changes through the course of the set leading to Kris’ Element Over Nature set at 1:30am. I’m glad my first track was 10 minutes or so as we had a lot of moving around to get my equipment centralized and cables plugged and unplugged while I began. I find it’s usually good to have a long track to start (long ones are also good midway if nature happens to call…). It was really dark on the dance floor, the incredible decor looking amazing in the black light, but it made it hard to gauge the reaction of the crowd and to see much beyond the first few rows of people. And unfortunately the stage setup was such that I couldn’t hop off the stage to go into the crowd and dance, as I usually like to do (it seemed to make quite an impression when I did that at the 2015 edition).

Despite not being able to see the reaction of the crowd much – with the exception of a few cheers here and there near the front – I went with a story that seemed to be flowing for me. I always pay attention to my own history with each track as well as where the flow is now vis-a-vis the time of night/day and where in the party and people’s journey we are. And I wanted the opportunity to play a few favourites. I find Juno Reactor tends to be underplayed so I was glad to include a couple of their classics, and there were a few beloved tracks from others I got to include: Hallucinogen’s classic Angelic Particles, for example, which is notoriously difficult to mix both in and out of because of the beauty and structure of the track, but I think I managed well here, leading into it from the epic Delta Traveling at the Speed of Thought and into an alternate mix of Semis’s beautiful track Planet with a similar harmonic framework. It was interesting which tracks I *could* hear went off: Crop Circles’ Antonomasia, Infernal Machine’s Nocturnal Chainsaw Kerfuffle (more than I expected), an alternate mix of the Pleiadians’ Alcyone (an absolutely mindbending version), and perhaps most surprisingly to me The Infinity Project’s Binary Neuronaut … the latter is one of my all-time favourites but it’s so deep and mystical that I didn’t expect to hear as many ‘Woohoo’s as I did. I also expected to hear a bit more during the Delta – but I gather from friends on the ground and from some video footage that the place really did explode when it hit (and rightly so – it’s a belter and an all-time favourite).

I was bouncing around quite a lot – as I do when I play (you can see in the video below) – but had to tone things down in the last half hour as Kris’s drum set was moved behind me and a) they didn’t want me to crash into it (not just because my head-bashing hospital-stay-inducing incident on my previous visit to Portugal) and b) my bouncing was causing Kris’s computer beside the drums to jump up and down on its stand and it was at risk of falling off! I ended my set with the brilliant Slugfest by Slug –  Tsuyoshi with Gus Till – a real favourite and a powerful track, one that Tsuyoshi knew that I liked back in the day – and interestingly, when I got feedback from a few folks directly after the set and the next day, that was one of the tracks that they mentioned having been glad that I played, which I was very happy to hear (it still packs a punch).

And here is my remix of the set – I deliberately don’t put some unreleased tracks in online versions of my sets because it is important for there to be the element of surprise and the possibility of a brand-new experience at the party… so if people want to hear some of the super-rare items, they need to come to an event where I’m playing. That said, there are a couple of unreleased ones here, along with the standard versions of a few of the unpublished tracks I’d played, so the story is basically identical:

I met up with Fede and a couple of friends after and stuck around a little bit to hear some of Kris’ set before heading back and trying to get some much-needed sleep. At the van heading back was Ree K, whom I’ve known since the 90s and had last seen in Japan a few years earlier when I was there on a work trip. Federico didn’t know that I spoke as much Japanese as I do, and R and I had a long touch-in while being driven back to our cabins – apparently her suitcase was missing in action so we discussed a bit how to go about dealing with that since that had happened to me on my previous visit. Her husband Masa had either not yet arrived or was back at the lodgings (I can’t recall right now as I’m writing this) so we didn’t meet him just then.

I didn’t get a whole lot of sleep and when I woke up in the morning I could literally not stand up! All that bouncing – clearly not in the right shoes – had done some harm to my heels and I was in serious pain! I had to massage my feet quite a bit before I could even make any attempt to stand or walk… I was pretty worried that I had done some permanent damage and was beginning to wonder if ZNA was hazardous to my physical well-being, what with the accident two years earlier. But after a little while I was able to move around, and I went outside to join Ray, Graham, and others who were gathered around a table having a chat. One of Ray’s friends – a lovely German geezer, Rama (who is now sadly no longer with us on this Earth – RIP) – had some amazing German lotion for sore muscles which he loaned me (and later generously gifted to me) which worked wonders and helped a lot. I had a terrific catch-up with these true original Goa-heads. It was a bit of a dream come true to hear Ray say that he’d heard me play his track Stellium – one of my all-time favourite tracks, one we’d talked about many times – and liked how I mixed in and out of it, and also to hear that Graham heard me play two of his tracks (I saw him dance by while I was playing the Noises from the Darkness live mix).

After a little pool time at the lodgings – did I mention we had a pool? – we headed to the festival. The main system was down for a while prior to Ree K’s set to provide a bit of a break for the dancers. I had heard that the driver went to the airport to get her bag, but they refused to let him have it because he didn’t have her passport and a signed letter from her… and because we were unable to find a cable for her to use to plug in the devices she’d planned to use, she had to pull some music off of Masa’s computer and play a completely different kind of set from what she had intended.

Well – it was a completely different kind of set all right! I was with Fede at the Grindhouse coffee area talking things over with some Belgian party folks when Juno Reactor’s classic ambient track Landing – the closing track from their Transmissions album – started playing. I recognized it immediately and also the fact that it was Ree K playing – there is something to the presence of some old-school DJs whereby you can recognize a certain style and energetic signature. I remember that back in the day, the first set of the night usually started with an ambient track or an ambient flow that would then build into dance music, and this was clearly some old-school vibes that were starting to emanate from the sound system, so we finished up our conversation and went to the dancefloor. Once Ree K started the kicking music, there was no holding back the energy on the dance floor (or my own). The command she projected was incredibly powerful – like a samurai, there was a non-negotiable fierceness of presence, a sense of power that goes beyond external displays of strength.

This demonstrated something I’ve long been aware of and spoken to: that the energy of the DJ blends with the music they play to create a unique energy on the dance floor … and when the DJ is working with something greater than just the music, what gets amplified goes well beyond a ‘personal’ energy but is rather something greater – and I believe this is what has led to the deification of many DJs (and ironically – and quite unfortunately – most of those who are deified aren’t delivering anything as expansive as what Ree K was providing that night). Throughout her set – which started an hour late and therefore ended up being shorter than anticipated – Ree K dropped one classic after another, from Voodoo People’s Quadsep (notoriously difficult to mix in and out of, and what an amazing job she did) to Mandra Gora’s Everything is Going Fine to Total Eclipse’s Anne Clark remix.

The crowd was going ballistic and I was delighted that so many of my friends had a chance to hear and experience a quality of energy that I was fortunate enough to be exposed to regularly in my ‘training years’ in Japan in the mid 90s. Some of the emotion in her set might have been due to some other circumstances: she was frustrated that her suitcase was unobtainable and that she couldn’t play her expected set, and Masa had earlier in the day had fallen and broken his arm, and was at a hospital a considerable distance from the festival while she was playing! That she was able to deliver such a profound performance under such arduous circumstances (and during the final part, while the stagehands were moving about her setting up X-Dream’s equipment) was nothing short of remarkable.

A few moments captured on video from her masterful set:

She made a Facebook post which includes the tracklist – but unfortunately her recording was too low-quality to post.

Delta in his Delta chair

Once Ree K was done this utterly EPIC set, the X-Dream fellas together with Boshke Beats head honcho Alex began their massive 8-hour performance that would include DJ’ing, X-Dream live, Delta live, and all kinds of awesomeness. Because I needed to pay attention to my overall well-being and because I’d been fortunate enough to hear X-Dream in a gorgeous retro set just a couple of years ago in Tokyo, I opted to return to Casa de DAT to get a full night’s sleep. Not that I completely missed out on what they were delivering: at 650am, lying in bed several kilometres from the party (we were about 2km away as the crow flies, although the road was 14 km or so), I could hear the baseline of the classic monster track Coming Soon.

As I lay there, I considered how that kind of uniqueness in the music of the 90s – where a track was immediately identifiable, where a sound and baseline could be so utterly distinct, so totally different from anything else that anyone else had produced – and thought that for all the advances that we have now in terms of sound production, the actual *music production* – in terms of creatively producing music that is pushing boundaries – has not progressed nearly so much and has in fact regressed in several ways. I have long lamented the fact that the current ‘machine gun’/’galloping’ bassline and limited harmonic framework of many of the headliners today has created a kind of disposable form of music, where one track is easily replaced a few months later by another track with similar elements, none of which contribute to a track being considered a classic for any period of time after its short shelf life. While I do get the importance of new music and keeping things fresh, what I miss about the 90s is where the artists were pushing their own boundaries to explore new expressions of harmonies, stems, riffs, and the like. Food for thought lying in bed listening to amazing music produced 20 years before from a distance of a couple of thousand metres…

Ray and Graham palling it up

I had hoped to see Masa that morning but his set started too early for me to get there, so I had a leisurely morning. Kunal and I caught up a bit, and we had a text exchange with Joti, who had come and gone from the festival without us having been able to see him. I’d housed with him a bit last time and he’s always an absolute riot to hang out with, so it was a real loss not being able to spend time with him. We then enjoyed another discussion with the Geezers of the Round Table at the accommodations. Being as prepared as I can be – especially when it comes to food, since I have a ridiculous appetite and some food intolerances – I had not only bought a good deal of food at the supermarket but also had some specialty items I brought with me from Canada (specifically gluten-free instant oatmeal). Because Ray and his girlfriend had been unable to get to the supermarket and were rather famished, I was working a bit of a Staff Kitchen in getting folks some coffee and food from my stash. The mornings were sunny but not blazing hot where our table was located, so it was relaxing to sit around and enjoy some chats. Having never seen Graham and Ray collaborate musically, it was great seeing them get along so well – which of course made sense, since they were both regulars in Goa before things got big and were both musically formative influences on the scene, albeit in different ways.

Sorting through tracks with Graham

Graham and I also went over the TIP collection on his computer to be certain that he had all the tracks he needed for a rocking Infinity Project dance set (I always make sure to have their whole output with me, as I love and play all their tracks). When we had spoken a few months before the festival, he had expressed doubts about playing only TIP stuff because it hadn’t gone over so well in Israel – people seemed to want faster, harder music, so he ended up DJ’ing a variety of retro trance – but I told him that ZNA was different and people were really music-focused, and that as he was booked at Infinity Project, he really needed to feature those tracks. So we had a listen to some of the classics and the alternate mixes we had curated, and I ensured he had 3 hours of kicking Infinity Project tracks in a playlist so that everything was available for his creative mastery behind the decks.

Fede, Miranda, and Mark

Another slow lunch at the restaurant later, we headed to the party, and Fede and I finally met Miranda for the first time. After a bit of wandering around the festival, we convened at the ambient tent to catch some of Antaro’s set and for Graham’s downtempo set. And what a set it was – funky, groovy, trippy, spacey… extremely psychedelic. Graham gets so involved when he plays that his focus is so precise yet his whole approach is so spontaneous, and the energy that creates is remarkable. A particularly lovely part of the set was seeing Ray and Antaro (of Spirit Zone fame) both dancing and grooving to the latter part of Graham’s set.

I don’t recall much else from this night – I was enjoying the social aspect of the party and hanging around with friends, so I just wandered around with friends and had a good time.

The next morning Ray was playing and I really wanted to catch his set – we’ve discussed a lot about music and sets over the years but I’d never had a chance to hear him behind the decks.  I didn’t want to get the shuttle quite as early as 7am (the time that Ray was going) so I asked for one at between 8 and 830 so I could get there for his 9am start. Unfortunately no driver arrived until 930 – so while I kind of got my sleep-in, I could have in fact slept another 90 minutes. By the time I got to the site, Ray was over an hour into his set and the place was in full cyberdelic forest meltdown mode: musically, he was going all Australian on them, with that electro-static psycho-delic Psy-Harmonics sound. I was so happy to be in that space while he played Tiny Little Engines, which I had played in my 2015 set, as well as for Stellium … so at this festival, Ray and I heard each other play that classic track in each others’ sets, quite a lovely scenario. I also popped over to the ambient stage, where Manmademan were doing an awesome groovy set, but ended up at Ray’s set for its close (Doof’s Let’s Turn On).

A few moments from earlier in Ray’s set…

With what’s-his-name …

After Ray, Miranda got on the decks and the vibes kept pumping. She and I had been discussing the fact that it can be hard when there isn’t the feedback from a crowd jumping and really going off – they certainly used to be more feet-off-the-ground in the 90s – but Ray had whipped them up and the awesome crowd immediately started going wild for Miranda’s fantastic music, from the very first track. I walked around and had a bite with Ray and Jae while enjoying Miranda’s set from various vantage points. While on a walkabout I ran into Martin Freeland aka Man With No Name, whom I’d only met once, and he was super cheery and upbeat. I got him and Jungle Jim connected (ah, the joys of Facebook and roaming data at a party) since they are old mates (it was Martin that had told Jim about the party), and then I ended up taking a break from the party for a bit. I felt like a little more pool and sun time was needed, so Ray, Jae, and I headed there with Graham and met the X-Dream fellows there too. Lots of great talk about music and the like, with Graham’s amazing sense of humour leaving most of us gasping for air as we laughed uncontrollably.

The next morning I was up early. Miranda and her friend woke up and wanted to chill but also wanted music, and she only had her own on her computer, so she asked me to put some music on… which I did until the shuttle arrived to take me for some food, at which time the Computer de Solitare was locked up at Casa de DAT, leaving the Swedish Contingent music-less … sorry, y’all! Despite this, Miranda still calls me her favourite DJ for being there – albeit briefly – in her time of need 😉

Selfie time with Ofer and Avi

The final day of the festival was a belter. I needed a bit of a break and had a bit of a delay with shuttles, so I unfortunately didn’t get to the party site until after the four-hour Oferama Special had already taken place, when Ofer played a four-hour set with music from all of his projects. Fortunately I got to at least say hello as he and Avi (aka Space Cat) were at the shuttle when I arrived (time for a selfie, of course) and Dado had just started his Transwave set. Both Christoff and Dado had been supposed to play together, but Christoff didn’t make it and Dado was left to do the set on his own, which was a disappointment for him as well as for others, I believe. He played things a bit on the slower side but still with some full power, and paved the way for Martin’s incredible Man With No Name set.

And this is where things got fully 90s, as in arms-in-the-air-feet-off-the-ground-90s. As per my discussion with Miranda about how crowds used to be more energized in the 90s, my old friend and mentor Jay from the Odyssey parties in Tokyo that I went to every couple of weeks in the 94-96 period was commenting when he saw video of my set at the 2015 gathering that the crowd wasn’t really ‘off the ground’ in the way that used to be the norm. Indeed, things are often a bit more earth-bound at events, depending on people’s vibe and indulgences. Well – things sure took off during Martin’s magnificent 90-minute Man With No Name set. He started off with some of his gentler classics (Evolution is a real favourite) and then as things ramped up, the arms were in the air and people were jumping up and down in a way that I haven’t seen in a good long while. (I tried calling Jay in Texas on FaceTime but he wasn’t around – MWNN is a real favourite of his.) Martin seemed to be having a pretty amazing time himself and that was sure being transmitted through the music (as I’d mentioned above). Indeed, when we spoke afterwards, he was still glowing, saying that this was the performance he was most looking forward out of his bookings in that 2-week period and that while sometimes at a gig an hour seems to drag, this 90 minutes was so great that he didn’t want to get off the stage… That was definitely the uplifting, in-the-moment over-the-top energy that was being felt and expressed on the dance floor.

Martin handing over the controls to Graham

By the afternoon, the rumour had reached a number of party-goers that Etnica/Pleiadians would be closing the party after Manmademan’s scheduled final set. I had been privy to this possibility via the Italian DAT Connection and as usual I was good at keeping my lips sealed; it wasn’t 100% sure if it was going to happen but in fact it did. Paul and Sonya certainly gave their schedule closing set their all – they always do when they play (they are among the most dedicated, hard-working artists that I know in the scene) – playing a historical survey of their tracks from past to present. Their output is among the most varied in the scene, with a wide array of sounds and styles – a blessing in our time of streamlined cookie-cutter music.

As the Italian Duo were taking to the stage, the electricity on the dance floor started acting up – in the sense that the bulk of the lighting cut out, so the stage was lit with some rather mysterious minimal lighting without the black light around the public being illuminated. This led to a rather more mystical atmosphere as the pair played some of their classic tracks (Tribute was a real favourite). Although some of the levels didn’t to my ears serve the tracks ideally, I had a great time hearing them play and no one else that I could see was lacking any enjoyment! We had the usual shuttle bus challenge after the performance, as the drivers were about to end their shift, but we managed to get back safely to our Casa after having a catch-up with the Italian crew and some other friends backstage.

Glowing with the ManMadePeople

The next day was an afterglow experience of post-party bliss. A few folks had to leave – Graham among them – and we had some lovely goodbyes. But on the festival grounds, the music was continuing at the ambient stage as it was transformed, as it had been before the main event, into a dance arena. However, the weather took a turn for the worse, with dark clouds hanging over the space. There was a wonderful reunion of sorts here, as a number of artists had not raced home but stuck around for this next day, whether they were playing or not. I finally met up with James Monro, whose proto-goa set during the festival I had missed, together with his lovely wife Natasha. Max and Mauri were around in fine form, as were the Manmadepeople. Alex Boshke was doing an epic job of whipping the crowd into a frenzy with some brilliant early Goa stuff – aaaaaand then the skies opened and everyone was very tightly huddled under the tent at the stage. There were concerns about the wellbeing of the sound system in that unexpected downpour but for the time being things were functioning well. 

Unfortunately the sound would eventually need to be stopped because the rain got so intense and heavy that it was a safety concern. As a result, James did not get to play the set that had been scheduled – a big disappointment. But everyone was still having a great time in the post-party bliss. When there’s no music, I opt for my next favourite pastime: eating. A bunch of us wandered over to the food tents, and the Pleiadians indulged in some pizza (thumbs up from the Italian crew). We were treated to a gorgeous rainbow as the sun was setting after the heavy rains … a wonderful ending to a glorious festival.

The next morning we were leaving very early – a 6am departure – which was a rather charmingly chaotic scene as we all piled into the two vans to be dropped off at the restaurant and then reconfigured according to when we needed to be in Lisbon. Much like our suitcases being strategically placed like in a Tetris game, we were also rejigged and reorganized in the seating of the van.

Prepare for lift-off

Federico, Kunal, and I ended up riding back to town with Max and Mauri, and we had a terrific chat about music and events both past and present, as well as several other related topics. As we all had time to kill at the airport prior to the Etnica Boys’ flight and the rest of us checking in to our Lisbon accommodations for the rest of our stay, we went to a restaurant at the airport to enjoy more local coffee and snacks while discussing music and listening to a few samples on Mauri’s computer (needless to say, it was all amazing). And then the fellows were on their way back to Ibiza, though not before we posed for this photo in front of a well-placed space shuttle.

My time in Portugal continued for a few days of fun touring around with Federico and Kunal, meeting up later with local veteran Diogo (who hosted me on my previous trip when I wasn’t crashing into hotel furniture), and another great day in Sintra as on my previous trip with Sara/Psara. The entire event was glorious from beginning to end, from the musical content to the social time with like-minded producers and music lovers. It was the first time that the online community of the Unreleased Goa Project from Facebook were all together in the same space, and we enjoyed being able to be in the same time-and-space with each other, communicating in person rather than through a screen and keyboard. 

And so I am again looking forward to my visit to Portugal and ZNA land, where I’ve always felt so comfortable and welcomed. Adventure awaits I’m sure … in what form, of course we never know – and that’s part of the fun. At this edition I will be playing a smaller gathering, closing the Goa Guardians pre-party on the afternoon prior to the opening of the main stage. This more intimate setting will enable me to play a few special tracks that might not work as well with a larger crowd on a larger stage, and it’s also easier for me to hop out onto the dance floor, as I’ve been known to do…

For this edition, Federico and I have compiled the official ZNA CD compilation – a DAT Records collaboration with the festival – featuring unreleased tracks from artists who will be performing at the event this year, including a new remix by Hallucinogen of his 1997 classic track Horrorgram (spoiler alert: it’s awesome). 

Great memories from a thoroughly phenomenal festival … and more wonderful times coming up I’m sure. Hope to see you in the magical forest!