In A Galaxy Far, Far Away, A Stormtrooper Graces the Land of :: Sprung.

“There are over 6000 tickets sold, it’s going to be too packed!”

“Apparently it’s going be kak weather boet, lank cold and windy bruski”

“Too many kids are going to be on MDMA, not worth it chana”

Shut the fuck up, it was bloody perfect. Let me tell you how we didn’t party.

Photo by Luke Watkins

Without doubt, there was a copious amount of hype and build-up prior to Sprung. Fear started spreading across the city as the Sprung time slowly drew near, and many got worried that it wouldn’t be as good as it sounded to be.

Although I had fears of my own, I knew them to be good. I mean, after all, this was the first party of the season, yet with such came several implications:

For starters, there was the worry that too many tickets were sold, hence the venue will be overcrowded. Weather was predicted to be somewhat cold and with the possibility of a clouded sunrise, which too put many people off. And sure, these parties are slowly becoming more commercialized, so we expected a fair amount of suburban kids to experiment (and often overdose) on a variety of hallucinogenic drugs.

But to have missed Sprung due to the mere aforementioned misconceptions would have been a foolish mistake on your behalf, for I can assure you that whilst in the core they were possible, the party proved them all to be wrong.

To summarize Sprung in a short review is but a daunting task, for there is so much to be said, yet I’ll take into consideration your attention span and bring out only the highlights of importance.

The venue itself was never a personal favourite of mine, due to its distance from our Mother City and the commercialized environment it’s set in, but it was transformed into a wonderland in the best possible way nevertheless. Parking, although limited, was well managed considering the amount of people that went up. I would assume that this was highly due to the brilliant initiative by Alien Safari that posed a R100 bar tab incentive to any group of 4 people traveling in one vehicle. Kudos on that!

The décor was beyond incredible, closing off the dancefloor (ground?) in a mystical manner, with colourful gates surrounding all sides of it. The stage, alongside the sound rig, was too brilliantly set up to ensure us that Alien Safari isn’t fucking around.

Music wise, I was two minded about. Whilst the night time sets were dark as expected, and Xatrix, and thereafter PlusMinus controlled the transition from night to day with utmost perfection (a crucial moment for us all), sets that followed lacked that consistency. Brainiac impressed us as expected with a dazzling morning set, and Headroom showed us who’s boss for a good 2 hours. Gandalf picked the game up into a beautiful psychedelic trip, but then Loopus came on. Hate or love me, I didn’t think his set was all that great. For starters, the change in style after Gandalf was so drastic that it flabbergasted many of us.( I recently discovered the word flabbergasted, and find it to be too goddamn funny not to use – try say it out loud.) I understand that a set during that time slot is to be more chilled, but surely you should slow it down gradually. Moreover, the minimalistic core of his 2 hour set eventually became quite monotonous, disappointing many of us that had high expectations for him.

Yet these little issues were greatly overwhelmed by how truly great this party was. Never did we feel out of space on the danceground (boom), the sun was shining proudly without overheating us all, the music was loud and clear as was the purpose of us all being there : to mark the beginning of the season, and to do so with absolute pride.

We partied proudly, and we glad you did too. For the memories, for the organisers, for the artists and for you all – big ups!

Stormtrooper out.

LVStar Photography