Niskerone :: European Tour Diary [exclusive]

• Tour Diary Entry One

Saturday 10 July

I arrived in Barcelona after a not so luxurious flight via Istanbul with Turkish Airlines. I guess it wasn’t so bad, I just could not sleep due to screaming babies, overly playful kids and food i have never heard of. I learnt the first rule of traveling here, when you’re in the middle of a stop-over in a different time zone make sure you are aware of the time difference… I nearly missed my connection!

I got picked up at El Prat Airport by my good friends David and Xavi and proceeded to their house in the suburb of Granolles for a shower and rest. We headed back to the airport a few hours later to pick up Assembly’s Sumaiyah and took the rest of the day fairly easy. Lots of food and sleep.

One of the first things you will realize about Spain is that they love art, all forms of it.

Sunday 11 July

This was probably one of the roughest days i’ve ever had.

We got up at 6am – cleaned up, ate and left to go to Row 14 (yes, a nightclub at 7 in the morning) for their Sunday morning afterparties. The six and decor of this venue is nothing short of breathtaking. Waterfall outside, 2 dancefloors, large chill area and an open-air main room all fitted with items shipped from the African continent.

The club wasn’t as full as owners’ Arnau family had hoped, but it still had about 1 200 people inside. The drinking and dancing started as soon as we arrived and heard Narkotik D’Lux playing. In retrospect, somebody should have warned me not to overdo it.

We left at 1pm and headed to the “after-afterparty” at Cheringuito Bar on the beach.  By this time I was wasted and had already started bringing up all the cocktails and “chopitos” from this morning. I passed out on the  beach and the next few hours was a blur. Sumaiyah was off somewhere being Sumaiyah. I woke up with quite a tan and after a dip continued the festivities haha! On the way back to the car at 6pm, I was shown where FIFA World Player of the Year Lionel Messi resides, very quaint.

Later the night after dinner and watching Spain lift the World Cup (woop!), I went off to play my first show of the tour at KGB. It’s always weird to see clubs only filling up at 3am. Great sound and great crowd always makes a good night out. It was a nice warm up for the following weeks festival.

Monday 12 July – Thursday 15 July

The next few days were spent doing lots of drinking, eating, shopping, walking, cycling, sightseeing (which is absolutely amazing) and recovering. It was good to hang with all my Spanish friends again.

My girlfriend arrived on Wednesday and this led to even more partying. I don’t remember the last time I had so many hangovers in a row, it gets to you after a while haha. By this stage of the trip, we were staying in central Barcelona at Juan and Vincent’s apartment next to a very old Cathedral. I managed to make a few trips to my friend Marc Guardi’s special grow room, about 50m away haha. Holiday time.

Friday 16 July

The day before Monegros Festival.

Nastie Ed and his lady arrived in Barcelona and we all left for Juan’s other apartment in Fraga. Once there, we rendevouz’d with the entire Monegros family friends crew. I think there was about 40 or 50 of us and while some slept in preparation, others started the partying already.

Saturday 17 July

Monegros Festival.

We got up and went to Juan’s grandparents’ “huerta” on the outskirts of Fraga. A stunning villa complete with swimming pool, trees, surrounding mini-farm and sunshine.

It was the perfect warm up for the coming madness. We swam, we ate, we tanned, we swam some more and smoked lots of green.

I left for the festival at 3.30pm as I needed to report to the stage manager by 5pm. Upon arrival backstage, I immediately realized how professionally run this event was. Everything ran like clockwork. The backstage crew were super friendly and after having a look at the gear (3 x CDJ-1000s, Allen & Heath X:One 92 and a monitoring system that is bigger than most club soundsystems in RSA), I headed back to my dressing room to begin the preparation ritual of figuring out exactly what to play.

I played on the Carpa Paquena stage (a 5000 capacity tent) as the opener for Aphrodite, Sub Focus, Caspa (supposed to be, but more on that in a bit) and Marco Carola vs Loco Dice. The feeling you get from starting your set to 5 people and ending with +2500 in 90 minutes is like an orgasm. Really. I kept most of my set towards the liquid and rolling side of Drum & Bass and only started banging out some big ones near the end.

After my set, I was pleasantly surprised to get stopped for photographs by loads of people in the area. Monique and I did some walk about to see the festival in all it’s glory and returned later for some chit chat with Sub Focus and MC ID (really friendly guys I have to add). Around this time, the stage manager ran up to me and told me that he had been looking for me for a solid 30 minutes. Apparently Caspa’s records never made it to Spain and he could not play. The stage manager was trying to find me to see if I could play another set after Sub Focus in Caspa’s stead, but since he could not find me, Cardopusher was up to the task instead. Just as awesome as I was feeling after my set, I was now gutted that I missed this opportunity to play after Nick Douwma to about 5000 people. If only I carried my phone with me! There is a lesson to be learnt here. Remain contactable. Always.

Disappointment aside, I felt honored that they would consider me for such a task even though it never materialized.

I got to see a lot of my favorite artists play. My top 5 Monegros list is as follows:

5. Richie Hawtin

4. Bloody Beetroots Death Crew 77

3. Ben Sims

2. Pendulum Live

1. 2 Many DJs Live

It’s needless to point out that we got absolutely hammered and surprisingly made it to the very end of the festival. It took the next few days to fully recover from all the injuries, while some of the crew kept going. I honestly have no idea how the Spanish do it. They party harder than any other group of people i’ve ever met. Seriously.

Niskerone