Last Saturday (the 23th of November) I went (as always) to my favourite place on the planet Gifgrond. As one of the few people that can’t read a clock when they see it , I stumbled into the venue before the actual openings time. Luckily the Gifgrond hostess recognised me from my earlier reports on the reoccurring event and was kind enough to let me in. This was quite exciting and excellent as my early arrival made it possible for me to see a nice snippet of the day time activity that was going on: Yuri Landman was busily giving a phone mic hacking workshop.
I happily sneaked through it like a camouflaged nobody and witnessed some of the hacked phones looking good as they had been hacked and now lovingly reassembled. What a beauties!
Not long after, I smelled something very amazing, I traced it back to (a usually off limits area) in which I found Marcelle in the kitchen, who had made some incredible and good looking tasty vegan food, so deliciously appetising that I had to taste it for reporting purposes and can report to you that it was gone in a second, so much flavour and yummy!
And the desert… Amazing!
After a bit I went outside to join the regular party people, just in order to report on the experience as if I had been in their shoes. It didn’t take long before Nick J. Swarth appeared with Christmas decorations on his hat and toxic T had come in the shape of a devil to welcome the visitors into the brand new evening of unforgettable Gifgrond nights!
With my belly still filled up I started to hear something into my ears, tracing it back to the party that had started by what I would call ‘the perfect deejay’ or also known as DJ Sampelman. He would be there to kick it off, keeping the place buzzing in between acts and would stay to the nearest end. Dedicated he would be there playing refiners in order to finish it off into the great depths of the night.
He was key to keep a happy atmosphere, coming across as super chill, bringing bright and acidic upbeat cheerfulness to the dance floor with an attitude of someone who knows exactly what he is doing & doing it because he loves to do it.
It was a true joy to see how he picks the records out of a magic box, looks at it with pure confidence and with slight bewildering effortless antics, takes out the vinyl like a smooth operator , drops it precisely on the turntable and moves his hand towards the right places in order to generate a great mix that simply cannot be missed! Such style and class you won’t see much in the deejay scene! DJ Sampelman was totally the coolest super glue of the party!
After a nice while of admiring the deejay skills, it was time for Bloom de Wilde ft. SCALE to take over. Bloom de Wilde looked stunningly great, dressed in a dress to impress with a wonderful dragon on her head, an aura that shined bright and a posture to be in awe with. Next to her on the floor was Scale, a human beatbox with his tools and big bottle of rum.. Bloom was armed with a brave ukulele that she stroked and strummed as she stood fierce like a proud and wild rockstar.
With sparkles in her eyes she opened her mouth to let her volcanic vocals out, bringing great beauty and power in the Gifgrond environment while the drum sounds created by Scale established an empowering backdrop of upbeat energy! Many didn’t know that Bloom de Wilde and Scale never played before and did not even rehearse, which made it for me as a quality reporter with tons of knowledge and insider information even more of an impressive show!
They sounded tight and the voice of bloom could silenced even the rowdiest of audiences, singing straight in their hearts by bouncing her sound all over the legendary premises! Amazing and powerful!
After this I went to check out the beautiful bar in which organs had been giving a new life. Behind it I found Gerrie en Paul doing an excellent job of making everyone happy. I got myself a ‘voorbehoedsmiddel’ cause you just never know and this got uniquely celebrated by them doing a little mini noise show! Only at Gifgrond such a thing happens…. state of the art!
After a while it was time to reveal why there had been bottles of drinks in the background; apparently this was not a random table for a a thirsty person but an innovative instrument build and invented by Yuri Landman.
His energy seemed endless especially when you realise that he had been helping and teaching people how to make phone microphones from 12:00 to 18:00. As if he had no tired bone in his body he engaged himself with his table full of innovations of the audio kind. Yuri Landman’s performance was truly excellent.
Think of a mad professor that brought his audience not into his secret laboratory but brought his lab to the people instead. Things rhythmically filled the air as he sparkled out new audio sensations one after the other. In Yuri’s world anything could become a instrument or at least a source of sound.
His set became truly psychedelic and fantastic when he played his own stringed instrument, sound became as if the walls had been melting – frantic voices had been captured in ghost boxes and had now been freely released to fly around Gifgrond in all their might and freedom! Luckily things didn’t became all too dark as I couldn’t help but notice the visuals of Bloom her Animal Spirit bringing a cat universe to the best place of all places.
The last live act was the solo performance by the enigmatic surreal appearance of Sajjra, his face looked very seasoned like a time traveler that had seen all and had just stepped out of the portals of doom to deliver the audience something that he had just witnessed before.
With screeching sounds of unforgivable psychosis he repeatedly howled his ‘oooooh’ through the speakers, playing out screwed sceneries of hell with a flair of an Wild magic adventurer that could change into a bat if he wanted too!
People knew that this was magical powers at work, trying to possess and influence the innocent bystanders through audio intoxication. People automatically tried to block the defeating sounds out, but resisting was useless as Saijjra was here to plant the seeds of demons in all who had intended the show!
That’s why going to Gifgrond is such a remarkable place as you just never know what will happen, one moment you are offered some rum, get exposed to golden light by beautiful vocals, get mesmerised by the inventions of a mad professor and his good vibes and one other you will get swiped off your feet by a single person whose howling howls and sounds cannot be escaped!
DJ Sampelman – classy as he was – sparkled the happy vibes back in, calming the great audience down into a happy place of satisfaction and that was the amazing end of a brand new and unbelievably exciting Gifgrond episode! Can’t wait for the next one!
http://gifgrond.nl
p.s. all action photos by Frank Janssens! bless you!!
special thanks to Frank, Marcelle (for the wonderful food!) Nick and Yuri for the wonderful workshop, the sound engineer, the hosts, the bar crew and the artists!
Yeah I Know It Sucks 