Last week, on a hot and very sunny Saturday evening, I had raised my nose highly in the sky. I sniffed something very peculiar in the air! My noseholes picked up something very interesting. A sense of adventure, a thing of excitement, an encouraging brew of a potential journey!
Where did this inviting, yet seemingly party-like odour come from? My curiosity became stronger and stronger until I couldn’t stop myself from going into full detective mode. I wasted no time and put on an interesting face, and sniffed firmly again: this is the perfume of a mystery that must be solved!
Hmm…yes, there it was again! I was happily excited as my nose suddenly recognised the distinguishing strong smell of a brand new Gifgrond episode mixed with potentially some fruit! Did I smell some Kiwi’s? I tapped myself on the back and whispered that I was a “great detective”. The kind who always solves any case even if all odds are against it!
I took in a big whiff of fresh Gifgrond air and noticed the irresistible sense of DJ Krikkrak and Logosamphia whisking me over. (A deejay and an artist who had already made their way into my thin folder of music-heros.) But I could also pick up some brand new odours that danced happily inside my nose… was this Osica? Or perhaps Nuances D’Engrais? Or maybe it was that very distinctive oily flavor of Kevin Diesel? Those last artists I was kinda unfamiliar with, but somehow, by following my nose, I knew that this unfamiliarity would soon be history.
I put on a clever disguise, walked and walked until I reached the source that led me to this journey: Gifgrond 81! A poster revealed I was (of course!) right! Osica, Kevin Diesel, Logosamphia, Nuances D’Engrais and DJ Krikkrak. Their names were all on it! And they are performing tonight! C’est magnifique!
Once in, it didnt take long to be happily embraced with the fun deejaying skills of the never disappointing DJ Krikkrak. His exotic sounds were simply amazing from the start. I felt each tune and every crackle of the vinyl drilling away at the purest pleasure centers of my brain! Every bit of music DJ Krikkrak gave a spin made me curious. What are these pretty sounds and who put them out for us all to enjoy? A lot of questions didn’t get answered, but it didn’t matter. I knew it was DJ Krikkrak who delivered the good stuff; a mix of freaky fun that was all laid down in a sense of utter ease.
In fact, DJ Krikkrak might be the subtilest and most confident deejay I’ve ever encountered. Krikkrak drops such audio dope in such a relaxed way that it might trigger those thoughts in which you question your own sanity. Soooo good!
Luckily, there was enough time to be completely drowned away in Kikkrak’s brilliant insanity just yet. As there was the first performing performer of the night, yes, it was nobody less than Kevin Diesel, ready to blow any mind away. Within an instant, thoughts had been shot to the far end of the moon as it was invaded by the delicate mix of sounds and distortion by this solo artist.
Kevin Diesel really held its name high up by providing Gifgrond 81 with a whishy-washy mishy-mashy headdrainer of the highest order. At one point my ears picked up the sound of a cat whailing & at another the vibe of adventurous boat-sinking sounds of mermaids singing their wonderfully disturbed songs on their legendary rocks…
What was this magic? It is not the usual sound you expect coming from the artist’s table on which a pair of Volcas are spewing out all they have got: but then again, Kevin Diesel seems to be able to make these synths sound like the eruptions of a hot volcano! The ground was shaking, the Gifgrond-soundman was holding onto its speakers like there was no tomorrow! An excellent rumble of noise delivered instant satisfaction!
And yes, the sound explosions of rhythm and glitch was exactly what the artist kept providing. With a fair amount of distortion, it felt like catnip to all the lucky people who were attending the party. The audience might not have been cats but they surely started to behave like them with Kevin Diesel blasting out its goodness!
After the smoke of Diesel cleared up, it was time for the second life-changing act of the night; Nuances D’Engrais. My goodness, this artist had no trouble at all continuing the mayhem. It had dropped us straight into the heath of pure action. My eyes spotted someone twerking on the floor, which is a sight that says its great stuff to go ballistic with! Just like a cuckoo wizzard, Nuances D’Engrais got everyone sucked up into an irresistible music trance. With a very distinctive style, ruled by a very insane deep bass that would make every appendix wobble & a fair amount of classic chopped up drums, this artist broke the few possible boundaries that had been left unturned.
Nuances D’Engrais provided an enchanting style that simply made all the walls of Gifgrond wobble, as if they had been made out of rubber. Pacemakers might have skipped a beat! Towards the end, the artist treated the unclogged ears with an epic orgasmic ambiance, which felt to me like a surprising bit of headspace, something that sounded similar to the sound of heaven after traveling through a wild and excited ride inside a buzzing wormhole.
The audience was already ecstatic when Kevin Diesel was driving the sounds, but when Nuances D’Engrais came in, it simply placed the state of minds into an absurd higher order! What a performance, what a sound! What the heck? Could this increase even more?
Well… enter Osica! A duo of giants that seem to have been coming out of nowhere. Bringing camera and screens for a visually-pleasing glitchy spectacle in sheer happening form, along with a teamwork of sound that sounded so bold and brave that it might aswell have resurrected the dead with ease. What an amazing sound Osica had; very strong, together, a proper team of boombastic sound modulators, kicking and highly captivating. The crowd of Gifgrond 81 was so into it that their energy bounced from them to the artists and from Osica back to them again! A vicious circle of hyper-ballistic teamwork that made every single soul part of the performance!
Maybe it is fair to also give some kudos to the Gifgrond sound-engineer as the sound tonight was excellent! Osica’s audio-visual experience was set to the max without hitting the distortion levels. The big kicks could be felt in all their mighty glory! Osica just blew the air away with this very energetic set in which beats and melodic lines bounced around inside every happy ear-drum! Nobody seemed to be resistant to Osica and its modular banging sound, as certainly every single individual at Gifgrond was dancing ballestically. Osica seemed to feel that vibe and used it to warp their set into even higher realms! Big beats, heavy kicks, nasty lines of sounds… Osica let them work hard for them and the audience clearly loved every single bit of it!
Maybe at this point the smell of Gifgrond must have been made out of sweaty party-goers, but as the vibe was so good & the sound so bold, nobody seemed to notice.. There was simply no time for that, as when Osica left the floor, a great Gifgrond veteran took over in his own unique style! Like a frantic looking character that wouldnt have been misplaced in the fairytale part of nearby Efteling, it was nobody less than Logosamphia himself!
It was the confident feeling of “take’ em away”, as when Logosamphia takes over a party, you are simply said; guaranteed in for a treat! Keyboards were played upside down, vegetable friends were turned into sound sources and Kiwi’s brought a fresh amount of vitamin C to the show! This fireball of energetic energy flew from one side to the other, heavy bass, beats in twisted scènes, melodies that would make people fly away on magic carpets to far away lands in which reality and fiction melted into one hot brewing source of cheerful excitement!
The confident Logosamphia unleashed havoc in all the right ways! Aladdin might have dusted its oil lamp and wouldnt be able to wish for a better sounding act than this! The logosamphia’s sound was simply set like a frenetic fireball of joy, a sight to behold and that simply never disappoints. You get what you need with Logosamphia, as there are simply no other reliable artists out there who you can trust to deliver the goods! If the audience became even more fruity, he might have packed them for a future performance!
After a great set of live-fun, DJ Krikkrak took any left-over braincells away from all that managed to survive these excellent sounds. So glad I’ve got a good nose for adventure as this thrilling episode of Gifgrond 81 was simply a bold show of gratification after gratification! So full of energy and good time excitement! Be sure to point your nose towards the bright future: the inviting sense of upcoming Gifgrond 82!
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Yeah I Know It Sucks 