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Last years Entrain absolutely went off, with over 2000 people of all kinds of freakosity tripping out in a natural ampitheatre at the top of Takaka hill (at the top of the south island). The sound system was the best I'd ever heard, crystal clear tops, and tight bass, no matter where you stood. The music was excellent, provided by dj's 8 and conspiracy. A travelling tranceman from abroad had some dats of the latest dragonfly tracks, and Omni gave a fresh jungle workout that went well with the coffee and spliff I had for breakfast. the night itself was freaky - I only wore a t-shirt and a jacket and nearly froze; so I spent most of the night is a teepee that had a fire in the centre, feeling the subs pounding through the earth, and hi-hats riding on the wind, phasing acrosss the 20 meters or so between the tent and the edge of the dance area ... falling deeper and deeper in love with analogue electronics.
Salmonella dub were playing until 11, they are pretty dubbish, and should have been on much earlier - the tronce didn't begin until nearly midnight. the sound system was pretty sad - you cold stand in a couple of places and get wicked acousitcs, but almost anywhere else either the bass turned to mud or there was a horrendous slapback from the rear stacks. Things picked up when Unit 23 (from Auckland) started playing. His first track was an almost blatant plastikman rip that got interrupted by a power cut that lasted half an hour. Me and TG went to the other room (like most of the dance freaks) and boogied to some nice snappy jungle (unfortunately the mixing was not so snappy) until the power in that room was cut... back out side the main floor was back up and troncing away merrily, so we wandered around the perimiter.. The remainder Unit 23's set was quite good, but more interesting at the time was the crane replacing the blown transformer on a power pole - a sleek robot arm lifting up the unit to be wired in by some freak up a ladder to reestablish power to the second room and all the stalls.
Some of the tronce was actually very good, off dat, probably unpressed releases from the mighty Goa itself, but just because you like chocolate cake doesn't mean you have to eat it every day. Big kudos to Jamee and the Entrain crew. You pulled of a masterful production in tough conditions. Hopefully'96 will see some more events around the country from the wandering travellers.
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This year we came prepared - warm clothes, a tent of our own, semi-organic brain input threshold reducers and litres of evian bottled water. We arrived at golden around nine, set up the tent and cased the area. The entry gate was a crush for the first few hours, but the rest of the set-up was cool, food stalls, a real espresso vendor, a little urban room with more of a techno and drum & bass flavour, flouro murals surrounding the whole dance arena, a stage and surround sound
Tronce, tronce and more tronce later...Troncemaster majordrums belted it out, standing behind the decks thrusting his fist into the air like a demented crustie on acid ... the ambient break an the end of a track would be craftily crossfaded into the amazing whooshy bit at the start of the next, and before we mere mortals realised so, anthemic melodies from the shores of Goa would uplift us into the next plane of consciousness, cascading into a whirling malestrom of a pounding breakdown and up a semitone (for tension of course) thru to the next planet on our journey to the mystic homeland of our eternal destination. It was dawn before we realised. On came a live pa from nelson playing... tronce ... bass station and all.
Dance dance and dance. queue for half an hour to get coffee and food at extortive hippie prices and tronce in to the day - the ozone free Nelson sun beating down on us until they drove the dodgy old fire truck on to the dance arena and sprayed us merrily with refreshing water. And they were still playing tronce - even some of the tracks the played the night before.