You can still be anything this time around.
Dica and I hit the road on Friday morning. Our journey began in the place that had spawned the Drop Bass Network some two decades earlier; Milwaukee. A city first made famous by beer, then by Jeffrey Dahmer, until it finally became known worldwide as a source of uncompromising acid techno. We took a meandering path that saw us pass by Plainfield, home of Ed Gein – the notorious rural Wisconsin figure that served as the inspiration for Psycho (1960), The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), and The Silence of the Lambs (1991). We were en route to the long awaited rebirth of DBN’s most heralded series of techno pagan rituals: Even Furthur.
Some incarnation of Furthur had been a yearly event until the ‘last’ one took place mere days before the events of 9/11. That party had been a sprawling, quasi-apocalyptic happening. It felt like an ending, and when a year passed by with no word of three more days of peace, love, and unity… and then another… and still another. Hopes began to fade and, despite rumors and rumblings that it wasn’t really over, it began to seem like EF 2001 had actually been the grand finale. Until, that is, the radio silence was broken earlier this year. After an incubation period of fifteen years there would be a 2016 edition Even Furthur, and it was faced with the seemingly impossible task of living up to the myths and legends that had sprung up around it in its absence.
As I was saying, Dica and I rolled into Furthur on Friday evening. We spotted the Speaker Kreatures sign hoisted above their stage and made the decision to set up camp not far from there. We quickly realized that we’d placed ourselves in the midst of a den of unparalleled iniquity that had us positioned mid way between the Network 10 – Venus tent hosted by Electrified Entertainment & A Long Nite Productions and the White Trash Wrestling (WTW) DIY sound system that Speaker Kreatures had curated with help from two notorious mainstays of Milwaukee deviance: Addict Records and Massive.
These were just two of the side stages that were spread across the terrain of Even Furthur. They numbered ten in total and all of them were named for signature events in the history of the Midwest techno scene. This kept in line with DBN’s tradition of paying tribute to the past, not in a way that sets us up to repeat it, but in a manner that acknowledges the foundation that the present has been built upon. It evoked some degree of nostalgia for veterans of the parties of yore, but also helped to expose a younger crowd to the rich history of the region.
We wandered over to the WTW set up and found that we’d just missed out on the destructive fury of Chicago’s Sir.Vixx. It looked like a bomb had gone off. Smashed electronic equipment was strewn across the area set aside for dancing and the smell of ruptured capacitors lingered in the air. It felt like we’d deprived ourselves of precisely the sort of unbridled chaos that would have been right at home within the confines of the rickety barn that had housed the original WTW events all those years ago.
T-Dawg, one of the barn party regulars, had the foresight to prepare and share a spreadsheet that showed the schedules for all ten of the DIY sound systems. After a bit of exploring, which afforded us the opportunity to discover how delightfully close we were to both Camp Blood and the full service ‘Tiki Bar’ assembled by John Erwood, we consulted T-Dawg’s list and quickly realized that the nomadic Bombardier was about to perform on the Network 10 stage. We made haste getting over there to catch him in action, and it was well worth the effort.
I’ve seen Bombardier in action a number of times over the years and it’s always somewhat staggering to witness. Jason Snell is a veteran producer, with an imposing catalog of pseudonyms in a diverse array of musical styles. Under names like The Space Where She Was, The 13th Hour, and Kamphetamine his work has graced releases on Hangars Liquides, Addict Records, Low Res, Vinyl Communications and his own Division 13 imprint. In a live environment he is capable of effortlessly transitioning between any of the genres he works with and adapting his sound to virtually any situation without sacrificing his vision in the slightest. Inside the Network 10 – Venus tent Bombardier discharged a dynamic set that had enough heaviness and distortion to satisfy his hardcore followers, but never drifted too far beyond the techno that was expected on that stage. It was a dark, raw, and masterful spectacle for the senses that was a clear highlight of Friday evening, and ultimately led to him getting promoted to a main stage performance at the peak of Saturday night’s festivities.
The hills are alive with the pound of hardcore music
It wouldn’t be Furthur unless it rained, and it poured down for much of Friday night. By Saturday morning much of the terrain had been transformed into a treacherous mud pit. As the crew at Camp Blood started the process of roasting a whole pig over their bonfire there was a steady stream of jokes about the region being renamed Camp Flood in honor of utterly soaked surroundings.
The DIY sound systems started to fire up in the early afternoon, and WTW was soon blasting a bouncy set by Turtle Matt. This offering steered away from the darker fare that burst from their speakers for much to the weekend, but also seemed to bring out a welcome burst of sunshine. Later in the afternoon Decontrol upped the tempo and brought back the evil with a vengeance, before handing over the decks to a solid block of Massive Posse members and familiar faces from the barn party era.
Thanks to a devoted crew that managed to track down a set of needles for the decks, Dica and I were able strut our stuff. We opened things up with a genre defying set that was so no holds barred that we had to wear luchador masks for the performance. Drum’n’bass, vintage PCP tracks, hard acid, cock rock, hip hop, blue-eyed soul, breakcore and booty house all slammed into the 90 minutes of high flying turntable acrobatics that left a mess for ALAN! and his special guest Neehigh to clean up. They tagged in and jumped into the ring blending idm weirdness with the sort of hard acid sounds that one can always depend on Wisconsin to deliver.
Henry Vengeance, one of Massive Magazine’s techno stalwarts, fired an opening salvo of beats accompanied by the rallying cries bellowed by Cyrus in the opening moments of The Warriors (1979). The intro repeatedly demanded to know if the masses could dig it, and as Henry Vengeance blasted his way through a pounding live set of punishing rhythms it became clear that the answer was resoundingly affirmative. Throughout his set he managed to ramp up the intensity even as he brought down the tempo. It was sensational work that also showcased the brilliant programming by Joel Huber and the Speaker Kreatures crew. It proved to be the ideal way to set the early evening mood for the highly anticipated appearance by the multi-talented Addict Records and Drop Bass Network recording artist & graphic designer; Stunt Rock.
During a regretfully brief thirty minute set Stunt Rock unleashed a torrent of beats so broken they were on the verge of disintegration. Held together with little more than obscure samples and an absurd sense of humor, it was exactly the sort of fantastic collision between genius and dementia that had established his reputation in the first place. When it was over Deadly Buda, the WTW sound system’s main attraction, picked up the pieces and proceeded to throw down a volatile blend of morphing beats in his inimitably systematic and deadly style. Milwaukee mainstay The Hermit rounded out the night.
Of course, Electrified Entertainment & A Long Nite Productions had their own potent bill of headliners to close out Saturday night on their own Network 10 – Venus stage. It began with a blistering live set by Bobaflux himself, that Tonewreck extraordinaire; Paul Birken. Huddled behind a mass of gear and relentlessly working the groove, Birken amazed with an acid-drenched set that led the crowd on a journey and marched them straight into the welcoming arms of Tommie Sunshine.
There are really only a small handful of DJs that have been as continuously relevant as Tommie Sunshine. He’s a singular figure who played a role in the birth of the Midwest rave scene and has evolved into one of the most knowledgeable elder statesmen in the scene. It became clear that something special was in the works from the moment that he opened his set with Cajmere’s Percolator, and he chased it with anthem after anthem after banging anthem.
When it was over a gobsmacked crowd, completely unaware that Tommie Sunshine had more surprises up his sleeve, picked up their jaws and made their way to the Main Stage for Drop Bass Network’s Saturday night headliners.
Sunday mornin’ never comin’ down
On Sunday I decided it was time to wander a bit and find out what was going on in the less debaucherous regions of the campground. Much of the day was spent engaged in actively seeking out people I hadn’t crossed paths with since the previous Furthur, some fifteen years earlier. Over at Rave ‘Em & Bail-E’s circus sideshow I was able to locate Dan Efex, the Chicago legend responsible for unleashing the Disco Inferno cassette upon the world, and somehow lured him back to the dark side of the hill to grab a drink at the Tiki Bar. By mid-afternoon a few of us had headed back to our campsite where we had a few drinks with old friends in full earshot of the mind bending sounds of Michael Wenz ripping their way out of the Network 10 tent. All across the camping areas it seemed like similar reunion projects were afoot, and when the sun set and the last night of Furthur began there was a special sort of magic infusing everything.
The lucky few who were fortunate enough to get to the WTW system at the right time were treated to a spontaneous live collaboration between Addict Records artist Pressboard and Baseck, the West Coast wild man who had laid waste to the Main Stage on Friday night.
Not far away, Network 10 – Venus DIY was graced with an epic, spur-of-the-moment tag team set that saw another of Friday’s headliners – Frankie Bones, matching Tommie Sunshine track for track, anthem for anthem in a contest that ended, not with one arm raised, but with the hands of the entire audience in the air.
On it’s own that set would have been a fitting way to close out an overwhelming weekend of deviance, insanity, and amazement, but there was still a whole evening of programming to come on the Main Stage. For those who doubted the ability of Even Furthur 2016 to live up to fifteen full years of hype, never question the ability of Kurt Eckes and the Drop Bass Network to deliver… and never doubt the ability of seasoned ravers to seize the day.
Let’s do it again next year?