Bloc Festival went into the wee hours on Saturday morning, so getting up early to set the stand up proved a challenge for all involved. But we got there, and set up for another day of one-on-one demos in the Skyline Pavilion. Epic night of sets from Ikonika, Rustie, Modeselektor, Ramadanman, Beardyman and Drop The Lime.
During the day, Ableton hosted some workshops in the Dome with Al Tourettes and Addison Groove both stepping up and going through their Live setups, and performing for a bit. Really great place to have demos - kind of half way between a rad party and a workshop. There was an even split of people sitting on the ground looking at the Ableton live set, and people grooving along to the performance.
Talked to a lot of people about ways to incorporate The Bridge into their sets, moving from using it as a giant synchronised sample player, to remixing original productions and stems while bringing in influences over the top, to using it as the backbone of a live band. Other hot topics included buffer settings, sound processing and Noise Map analysis. Serious nerd life.
The day was full of killer sets from people like Roska, Soul Clap, L-Vis 1990, Addison Groove, Billy Nasty and heaps more. The cue for Aphex Twin was out the door, so instead we opted to try and win this evil owl:
I'm sad to report that despite numerous attempts, the string was never fully snipped. Then we came back the next day and someone had won it! Teh pain!
And that was Bloc. If you have the chance to go next year, I highly recommend it.
