BOOM!

Boom festival

   Well, what can I say about boom? It’s a festival that has really divided opinions. I must know at least 40 people who have been and the reports are as varied as it being described as a utopia, to pretty much the most traumatic experience of people’s lives. So what is boom festival anyway?

   Boom festival is held every other year on the banks of a large lake in a very remote part of eastern Portugal, near the border with Spain. It runs for an entire week, culminating with the night of the full moon in August. It was started in a different location in 1997 by three Portuguese brothers, but after the first three festivals they managed to save enough of the proceeds to buy a several hundred acre plot of wilderness around the current lake. Don’t let the following pictures of apparent forests around the cool looking lake fool you, this place is a desert. Every bit as environmentally hostile and unforgiving as the Australian outback; 40C days and 10C nights, its a place you really need to be adequately prepared for.  Plus a great deal of the camping area is built into steep, rocky and incredibly dusty valleys that are littered with all manner of spiky trees, bushes, thistles and shrubs. It’s not a place that lends itself well to living in a tent for a week in other words. 

    So why would someone in their right mind buy several hundred acres of Portuguese wilderness to hold their festival on? Well for boom it is more of a social and ecological experiment than a festival; Boom festival is quite unique in that they own the land they are holding the festival on, which isn’t too unusual in itself but where it does differ is that they are using large parts of the proceeds from the festivals to actively improve the highly unfertile land around the lake and are aiming to make their festival the world’s first completely off-grid and entirely renewable festival. As it is almost 70% of the entire festival is constructed using completely recycled materials and a further 10% is made from natural and biodegradable materials. In fact they may even end up going further than off grid and create a carbon NEGETIVE festival, i.e one that takes more carbon out of the atmosphere than it creates putting it on. The following is a summary of how they are managing this:

    They have invested a large sum of money into renewable technologies to help power the festival and also a large amount to help maintain the land. They have installed solar powered water pumps which on a hot sunny day can suck 80,000 litres of water out of the lake and up to large tanks at the top of a nearby hill where it is then gravity fed back down to irrigate and spray 33,000m2 of the surrounding land. They also collect all of the grey waste water from all of the restaurants, bars and showers and pass it through a natural treatment facility they have built on site. the water is passed through a number of layers comprising of several bamboo species, grasses, floating water plants and wetland species along with natural enzymes which help strip minerals and impurities from the water and purify it for use as irrigation water over the following year.
   For power generation they have four large scale solar power stations running on auto tracking devices so they tilt with the direction of the sun which can provide 50,000 watts of power on a hot sunny day and are used to power up to 80% of the production on site. They have also installed three 2.5kw wind turbines on a nearby hill which again power parts of the festival when it is running and help to power administrative parts of it when the festival is not on.

    The sound systems are powered by a 100kw generator which has been converted to run on used vegetable oil, as have three of their work trucks. The waste vegetable oil is collected from all of the kitchens during set up and pack down and from all the food vendors at the festival over the course of the week and processed ready to be used to power the next festival. In 2008 they were able to reuse 45,000 litres of otherwise unusable waste vegetable oil and turn it directly into power for the following festival.     

   My favourite eco-friendly technology however is the rather novel idea that they collect all of the waste material from the actual people attending the festival (i.e the poo), and turn it directly into compost via the use of 300 compost toilets. They don’t use a single portaloo onsite, every bit of human waste from 40,000 people over the course of the week is collected via large removable tanks installed underneath each toilet that can be lifted in and out with a forklift truck and then separated and stored for 2 years to break it down into usable compost which is then used to increase the fertility of the land. In fact if it were not for the widespread use of human compost,  this land would be completely bare. Not much grows here naturally apart from some very anaemic looking grass and some very spiky trees and shrubs. Here are a few photos of the typical landscape:

Here are a few more pictures of the track leading down to the festival from the campsite area:

   But due to the widespread use of human waste and the carbon neutral process of using solar powered water pumps and grey water recycling the entire place is populated with edible plants and herbs, here are a few photos of what they have accomplished:

   Bearing in mind that these pictures were taken spread out over an area of several hundred acres and I only really took photos of a very small amount of it, it is quite amazing and awe inspiring what they have accomplished here. The gardens cover a total of 33000m2 over the entire festival. Most festivals tend to run on a “leave no trace” ethos, where by the land is exactly the same as it was before the festival started. But boom have gone one further and have actually used the festival itself to actively improve and better the land for future generations to enjoy. If this festival did not happen here then the place would literally die and return to a barren scrubland. Obviously all of these new plants are sucking carbon out of the atmosphere and massively increasing the biodiversity of an otherwise very sparse area. Eventually these acres of plants could end up sucking more carbon out of the atmosphere than the festival itself is putting out, making its net effect carbon negative. Even disregarding the environmental benefits I personally think it’s great that they have large herb gardens there which anyone can go into and take a few sprigs of fresh rosemary or oregano for their dinner that night. (Obviously once you can get your head around the fact that they are grown entirely from human manure so you are effectively eating the shit of past festival goers! They still tasted just the same though).

  Another thing I liked about the festival was the widespread use of cob. Not only did they have permanent cob buildings and structures but also large art works and sculptures molded out of nothing more than dirt and a bit of clay:

This is the outside of the information centre, made from cob molded around old bits of plumbing pipe:

These are the back and side walls of the info centre, made from cob and old bits of dead wood:

And this is inside the info centre; it was surprisingly cool, even in the 40C heat:

This next building was called the Liminal village which was the centre for lots of talks, lectures and discussions on a wide range on subjects, which i will talk more about later on. They also played lots of cool movies in there when it got dark:

These walls were made of molded cob and behind each one it was hollow with seats all around the inside so you could sit down in the cool shade:

This is the main doorway into it:

And this is a picture of the inside when a lecture was on. The roof is made from recycled canvas sails stretched out on steel wires:

  The following are various sculptures found doted around the festival, mostly made from cob reinforced with various materials:

I really liked this structure as well, it’s like a small cob building which is half buried as well, you step down inside it and it has molded seating all around the edges and a table in the middle. It was very cool in the hot sun:

So all in all it is a very environmentally conscious festival, which the countless awards they have won for operating the greenest festival in the world has shown. In fact there was almost a bit of an incident with some of the food vendors during the festival; The people at Boom had provided all of the caterers and food stalls with 100% biodegradable disposable knives, forks, spoons and plates made from bamboo to serve their food up in so that no waste is produced (even all of the waste food and in fact the cutlery itself is recycled and turned into compost at boom). But as this festival turned out to be a bit bigger than the last one they miscalculated on how many plates they would need and 4 or 5 days in all the caterers started to run out. Most of the food stalls there are independent people just coming in to set up food stalls so had obviously brought all of their own plastic plates with them and they suggested just using those for the rest of the festival.  This didn’t fly very well with the guys at boom however who adamantly refused to let them use plastics at the festival and the caterers had to divide up whatever was left while someone drove at very high speeds for several hours to the nearest city to buy out their entire section of biodegradable plates before the festival ran out.  That’s a pretty stern commitment to creating an eco-friendly festival.

If anyone is interested in finding out any more about the eco-projects at boom there is heaps of info available on their website here:

http://www.boomfestival.org/boom2014/environment/

   Despite having described the place as a barren wasteland, the other thing I love about this festival is the venue itself.  It is true that it is an incredibly hot, dry place and what plant-life there is, is extremely spiky and menacing, even the trees. But as a location for a festival it’s easily the best i’ve been to. Having that huge lake to go and take a swim in and cool down at any point you choose is such a luxury for a music festival, especially one where the temperatures hit 40C. Plus the festival is sprawled over hundreds of acres you can wander about in which actually has a fairly abundant amount of trees, albeit very spiky ones, which quite a few of the other stages and food stalls and shops are set around. These trees provide some much needed shade from the heat in the middle hours of the day, although pretty much every single piece of shade was taken by people sprawled out hiding from the sun. At times it can seem an unnecessarily long walk from one venue to the next, especially in the heat of the middle of the day, but it’s still a very beautiful place to walk around. I particularly liked the warm evenings after it had cooled down and the sun was setting, the colours in the sky and around the grounds and the balmy late evenings really reminded me of being back in the outback at some far off mine site in the middle of nowhere, only with a lot less angry bogan men and a lot more pounding music and naked Europeans.

   Here are a few shots taken from around the lake, the little tripod things in the water are platforms that you can swim out to which have platforms made from ropes and cargo netting that you can lay in just above the water:

  Here are a few more photos of the trees around the festival. I particularly liked all the random chairs, hammocks and seats hanging from various trees:

This climbing frame was also worth a mention, built using the tree as support and shade it was three stories high with ropes and poles to climb up and down and different levels to lounge around on. But best of all the only way into it to begin with was through a shed some 10 metres away which contained a stairwell going down into the ground and into a tunnel which eventually led up into the inside of the climbing frame. Again, all of this is made from recycled pallets and wood and old building materials:

This tree also had cargo net levels to lay down in and a slide to get out, plus a nice little chair made out of an old oil drum for andi to sit in:

 

   So after having discussed the landscape around the site in great detail I still haven’t really addressed the question of what boom actually is. Well the short answer is that boom is a Psytrance festival. This is I guess is the thing which has most divided people’s opinions on it who have been. For those that don’t know, Psytrance is a genre of dance music. It’s a genre of music that really isn’t for everyone and I guess if you can’t at least tolerate it then you really wont appreciate Boom quite so much.

    Boom has 4 arenas or stages playing music; one is a Chillout arena, called the “Chillout Gardens”, set  at the start of a small peninsula that reaches out into the lake and adjoined by lush and beautiful gardens. It plays, unsurprisingly, chilled out music. It is a very chilled out atmosphere in there indeed with the middle of the floor consisting of a large padded blue mat which you have to take your shoes off to dance on and for most of the festival had people either sitting, lying, or sleeping on. It was a pretty cool looking arena though, a bit like a spaceship in my eyes, here’s a few photos:

The second most chilled out arena was called the” Sacred Fire Arena”, which was the closest thing boom got to an acoustic band stage. It was the only open air stage that wasn’t covered to protect against the sun so hardly had anybody around it during the days, but it got a lot more livelier at night. It was nearly entirely bands with some kind of DJ playing in between while the bands changed over. There were some really interesting bands actually, some using didgeridoos), much to Andi’s Australian pride and delight.  But most of the bands were also playing some variety of Trance or another. In fact I discovered a previously unknown genre of music at this festival (unknown to me anyway) known as “organic trance”, which essentially consisted of a band playing trance music with a variety of instruments. The following is a video clip I got from one of the nights, the sound isn’t great quality as it was taken on a Go-pro and not a proper video camera, but there is actually a didgeridoo playing in there somewhere:

The second from last arena at boom was called the Alchemy stage and was situated in a cool looking  stage, kind of like a multicoloured  crescent moon shape with the back of it open towards the lake and beach.  Here are a few pics:

I’d just like to point out that in the last photo taken from across the lake, the mountain seen in the background is not one continuous mountain as it looks, but the green hill is in fact in the foreground and the grey rocky mountain in the top half is a LONG way away, maybe 30 or 40 km. It’s just pure coincidence that they line up nicely together in the photo.  If you look to the very bottom left edge of the grey rocky mountain just before it is covered by the hill you can just about make out a small mountain side village creeping its way up the slope, as seems to be popular in the mountainous regions of Spain and Portugal.

The Alchemy stage played mainly house, trance and minimal techno. Here is a small bit of video footage I took walking into it just before sunset:

The final stage, the main dance tent was called the “Dance temple”. This stage was absolutely packed with people pretty much from start to finish, at the least 5,000 and probably as many as 25,000 for the first tune but on average I would say 10-15,000 at any time of the day or night, apart from 5pm until 9pm everyday when they turned it off to clear any rubbish and so everyone could go and have some dinner. Im not sure why they chose these hours to be honest, it would have made more sense to me to turn it off in the hottest part of the day, usually its cooling down by around 5pm which is when im usually up for dragging myself out of the lake and having another dance, but this is the point when the tunes go off for 4 hours. I guess it does mean that the music is turned back on for the start of a new night, just after the sun has set, but it still feels a bit strange to turn the music off for those hours.

    I would like to remind people at this point that 90% of all the stages, art, furniture and the entire festival in general are constructed from recycled or completely natural materials. This stage hasn’t been constructed by a set of professional marquee erectors buying all the materials to suit, but has rather been patched together from bits of bamboo, old parachutes and hot air balloons, and a whole aray of whatever other bits and pieces they could scrounge together. I think the result is truly spectacular myself, and without doubt the most vivid, colourful, innovative, and imaginative stage i have ever seen. It has to be seen to be believed. Apparently it is modelled on the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. Having only just recently been to the sagrada familia I can understand what they are getting at with the tall bamboo spires and the square domes with circular holes in the middle, it does resemble the inside of the sagrada. Here are a few photos:

Personally I think the look of this stage is incredible, and what makes it even more incredible is that this isn’t just the same stage that they dust off and drag out to be reused year after year, but they actually completely take it apart and make an entirely new, but equally as impressive stage each year. Here are a few photos stolen from the internet of past boom festivals:

  The Dance temple played pretty much nothing but Psytrance;  and not just Psytrance, but largely a sub-genre of Psytrance known as, no joke, “full on” Psytrance. If you’re not familiar with or not sure if you like Psytrance then full on is probably not a good place to start. It’s one of the harder, more brutal and minimal varieties of psytrance. It has a very distinct punch to it, and not as many trancey, uplifting synths. More like a kind of techno than other varieties of psytrance.

   I feel i must take a minute to talk about the soundsystem used in the Dance Temple at Boom: The soundsystem comprised of speakers made by Funktion One. For those that don’t know, Funktion One are a brand of speaker that have cropped up in the last 15 years or so and have completely taken over in the world of electronic music. Their soundsystems are used in the biggest superclubs in Ibiza, London and New York and at pretty much every music festival from Glastonbury to Burning man to Big day out. In short, they are very good speakers. The man who owns Funktion One, and in fact designed, engineered and hand built the first speakers himself is a man named Tony Andrews. He is widely viewed as one of the best and most innovative speaker designers alive in the world today.  So it goes without saying that Boom chose to use Funktion One speakers in their setup. But what is slightly unusual is that Tony Andrews himself, upon hearing about Boom and their commitment to a fully sustainable and carbon negetive festival, decided to check it out for himself. That was 12 years ago. And since he saw it with his own eyes he has insisted on coming to every single festival and setting their soundsystem up himself personally simply because he absolutely loves the ethos and vibe of the festival and wants to give them the cleanest and clearest sound that his speakers can offer them. In fact he even goes further than this and gets up on stage just before the first tune is played (which apparently he does every year), and recites a little speech to the 25,000 large crowd, informing them that they are in fact attending the most ethical, friendly, and environmentally conscious festival that he has EVER encountered. Coming from a man who has been setting up soundsystems at every single major festival and nightclub all around the world for the last couple of decades this is a VERY big accolade. He doesn’t have to come all the way down to the deserts of Portugal himself to set up their soundsystem, and certainly doesn’t have to get up on stage in front of 25,000 people to sing its praises. It’s certainly not something they have paid him to do but rather something he insists on doing just because he loves it that much and really believes in what they are trying to accomplish here.  So what you essentially have here is a soundsystem comprised of the highest quality speakers the world has to offer, professional set up and equalised for one very specific genre of music by the exact man who designed, engineered and built the speakers in the first place.. Needless to say it sounds good. It sounds VERY good.  It doesn’t get much better than this. Here is one photo of it taken when there was no one in front of it, what you have to appreciate is that the brown stage in between those two stacks of speakers is in fact full of bass speakers built into the stage, and stands roughly the height of a person, a 60ft wide, 6ft high wall of pure bass:

   Just to appreciate the size of this soundsystem, this photo was also taken with no one in front, but you can gauge the length of it a bit better:

  And this one with people in front just because I love the picture of the bubble, completely unintentional but greatly received anyway:

And this one of one of the side stacks:

                                         

There were also more delay speakers placed further back into the crowd and hanging off poles in the centre of the arena, just to throw the sound a little further. You can see some of them to the left of this picture:

   Just to demonstrate what Psytrance actually is, here is a brief bit of video footage i took on like the 5^th day. Again the Gopro seriously lacks the ability to convey the sound here, but even more so with this stage as it cannot handle the bass given off by their soundsystem at all and pretty much shuts out most of the sound. So what you have to imagine is that at the point when the music goes very quiet, it is in fact much, much louder than it was before with deep booming baselines pumping out on top of the higher frequency sounds. This bass is so loud you can feel it reverberating right through you no matter where you stand:

This link takes you to footage taken official by Boom organisers and is obviously far better quality than what we have if you would like to see more. It shows also aerial footage taken with drones to give you a better perspective of the scale too:

https://www.youtube.com/user/BoomWebTv?utm_source=emailcampaign103&utm_medium=phpList&utm_content=HTMLemail&utm_campaign=Letter+to+the+Boomers+I

   As has been mentioned before, this is a psytrance festival, which is what puts a lot of people off. This main stage is several times the size of the others and plays almost exclusively psytrance. Generally the first two or three acts of each night are bands of some kind, but they also still play some very heavy, pounding music. If this isn’t you’re thing then you’re a bit limited in how much of it you can enjoy. The other thing is that, as this main soundsystem is so loud and so powerful and because of the positioning of it facing away from the lake and up towards the hills, all you can hear any time you are back at your tent/ camping spot is the very clear sound of relentless psytrance. We got to this festival late and so were camped in a campervan at the top of the hill, maybe a mile or more from the main stage and yet back at the campervan the music was so loud that it wasn’t just a dull thud in the background, you could clearly make out every part of every tune, whilst lying in a closed van over a mile away. Apparantly there is a second valley you can camp in which is closer to the actual festival but because of the way the land is positioned,  it is sheltered from the bulk of the sound. Unfortunately  you have to get there very early to get a camping spot there.  This didn’t bother us too much though, as we were only really at our van for breakfast and then spent the entire day at the festival.  Whilst down at the actual festival you can’t always hear the main stage as there is a lot of other stuff going on, but it does get pretty drilling at night when your body wants to sleep but your brain can still hear the music thudding away and wants to get up and dance.

    I guess the other area i should mention is the “healing area”. This was basically a large gathering of colourful tents and marquees of various sizes where you could go a recooperate some lost energy and chill out from the rest of the festival. they had a massage and alternative therapies tent where you could receive all kinds of treatments from standard thai massages to acupuncture and also a lot more iv never even heard of before. Unfortunately you had to book these at the start of each day and had to queue for an hour to put your name down on the list and even then most of the places were long gone by midday. We managed to squeeze some kind of treatment called, in all honesty, a “woo wei” massage. We got this one purely because it was teh only thing left by the time we got to the front of the queue. I was hoping to try out some acupuncture, either that or a good back massage. Unfortunately the woo wei was neither of these things and didn’t really hit the spot i was looking for. It was some kind of stomache and sholder massage mixed with a kind of meditation. Interesting none the less, and so relaxing i actually fell asleep for a few minutes during it!

      There were also large group tents which held yoga classes, pilates, meditation sessions and all kinds of other hippy trippy shit and random rituals involving scared fires and chanting which were a little too esoteric and spiritual for my own person tastes, but each to their own. Theres some VERY spiritual people around here. I would even go as far as to say that if the spirit of the original hippies of the 60s has been embodied in any group of people alive in the world today, then they would be practicing reike, swimming naked in lakes and dancing to psytrance in a beautifully scenic location somewhere near you.

     I wouldn’t have minded doing a yoga or pilates session on the beach but we never seemed to find the time or catch it just before a session started. The whole area felt very relaxing though, especially walking through it at night when it was lit up with dim but brightly coloured lights scattered around in the trees.  Heres a few pictures of the general area anyway:

    Another thing i liked about this festival was the level of art-work there. Psytrance festivals are incredibly colourful and vivid places, and not just sculptures dotted around the place or the colourful stages themselves, boom had a full on art gallery with some of the most colourful art-work I’ve ever seen. They even had a live studio where you could go and watch people creating oil paintings from scratch. Even the gallery itself was a work of art, looking like a giant dragon, but made from old pallets and bits of bamboo, in which you had to walk through its mouth to enter the gallery:

Some of the photos inside; remember these are hand painted with oil paints and most of them are at least 4ft tall:

A few more pictures of sculptures/ artwork dotted around the festival site:

Yes those are real people in front of this thing and it is as big as it looks. It flashed and lit up loads of wicked colours in the dark as well:

This photo is actually a row of compost toilets, even the toilets were a work of art:

I thought id also include this photo of a donkey we found:

   This being a festival in Portugal there were understandably a fairly large number of continental Europeans there, but I was truly astounded by the complete range of nations in attendance. I expected a lot of Spanish/ Portuguese but they only made up maybe 20% of the total people there. Possible as many as 15% were English speaking, and by English speaking I mean a complete mixture of English, Irish, Scottish, welsh, American, Canadian and a surprisingly large number of Australians and kiwis. Of the remaining 65% maybe as many as 15% were French and german, which left the remaining 50% a complete mixture of indistinguishable eastern Europeans, Russians, Israelis, Brazilians, Argentineans, Mexicans, Indians, south Africans, Italians, swiss, and god knows who else. On booms website they claim that at the festival just gone there were 152 different nationalities in attendance!  (they ask you where you are from when you order the ticket). Thats more than three quarters of all the countries in the entire world making their way down the arse end of Portugal just for a festival.  this is quite an extraordinary feat when you think about it, especially when theres only 30-40,000 at the whole festival. This seems to be a regular occurance at psytrance festivals as it happens and not just something unique to boom. We went to a psytrance festival 3 hours out of Melbourne a few months back which was much, much smaller than this one, only around 500 people at the entire party. We thought ourselves quite lucky to have found out about it because it was so small, but during the weekend it must have been equally likely to have overhead a conversation in some far off European language as it was to hear one in English. Literally half the people there were either French, german, Spanish, portugese, Israeli, Brazilian or any number of other nationalities. Remember that this is 3 hours into the Victorian bush in far south eastern Australia, about as far as you could possibly get from Europe. At a festival in Portugal its at least understandable but all the way down here it boggles my mind. How do all these people find out about this kind of thing? And how do they get there? We spoke to a fair few of them and they weren’t immigrants residing full time in Australia, most seemed to just be in the country on holiday or travelling and found out about it through various means and decided to pop along. Quite a few had come to Australia especially for a much larger festival the weekend before (which we wanted to go to but unfortunately missed as I was away on a mining job), and found out about this festival there so decided to hang around for another week. It still seems an awfully long way to come for a music festival in my eyes though.

     I think the answer to the question of how all these nationalities manage to converge on these incredibly remote locations all over the world comes partly from one or two of the lectures we attended. As I mentioned before we attended a large number of lectures and discussions over the course of the week. A lot of these we just wandered into and sat down, and a few we actually picked out from the long and detailed timetable they had printed up on the programme. These lectures consisted of a very wide range of topics; there was a pretty heavy emphasis on permaculture, organic gardening and renwable and sustainable technologies and building technieques, which was good to see at a music festival. Not many festivals outside of Glastonbury go to the trouble of trying to promote eco living and sustainable practises. There were lectures on health and nutrition, economics and technology, a fair bit on neuroscience and consciousness, lectures on communal living and eco-communities and even classes on sculpting and working with organic materials to create art. A lot of the discussions had a very politically left wing stance to them, and a lot of them were pretty spiritual, but there were still some very interesting concepts being discussed. My personal favourites that we happened to see were: a group discussion with 4 guys who had travelled to boom by bicycle from various European locations. Long distance cycle has been an interest of mine for a while and it was good hearing the various stories of people who had travelled there by bike. “Boom by bike” is an initiative that boom are trying to put a lot of momentum behind to further reduce their carbon footprint. They are heavily trying to encourage people to join up together through a forum on their website and find like minded people in their particular country who they can bike to Portugal with. I also really enjoyed a talk from the head of an organisation called “projecto neuvo mundo” which is based all over south America and is attempting to create a massive database and cooperative of eco villages and permaculture centres all over south America which can use each other for help and advice and education on practices that can help them live a sustainable life in their community. Apparently this is a very big movement in south America at the moment with more and more communities attempting to live a completely sustainable life in harmony with the natural world around them and using the advice of others doing the same to help them. The operation also runs a website very much akin to the “woofing” system where by people can volunteer to stay at one of the communities and help out in exchange for free food and lodging and the experience of working on an organic/ sustainable community. Where it differs from woofing is that with woofing the volunteer will be staying on single farms or properties but with this program they will be living and working with an entire community. We also managed to catch a really awesome movie at about 2am which was entirely created by one guy on his computer but was some kind of scientific movie which at the beginning claimed to be about “everything”, which in a way it was. It walked through a lot of the fundamental science and connections behind the creation of the universe and cosmology, the history and evolution of life on our planet, quantum mechanics and subatomic chemistry, einsteins theories of relativity and the concept of time but then went even further and linked it all into human consciousness and the concept of reality and the illusion of time and our place and position on this earth and in the universe. It was illustrated with loads of really cool graphics of explosions and atoms splitting and all kinds of random fast paced movie snippets to help illustrate what was being taught. I know that all of you know that me and Andi are a couple of big science geeks at heart and can appreciate that this was just what we needed to see at 3 in the morning after a long night dancing to psytrance.

   But back to my earlier point on the question of how all these people find out about these parties all over the world was partly explained in a number of the lectures there which gave time for other organisers from different psytrance scenes all over the world to come and tell people about the parties that are happening where they come from. We watched quite a good talk from a south African guy who was telling us all about the parties around cape town, and whilst he was talking there were pictures of all these various parties in beautiful locations around the coast of south africa being shown on a slideshow on the big cinema screen behind him. This iv never seen at a festival before; time being given to organisers of other festivals to come and tell everybody about the parties they are doing. You certainly wouldn’t get an English music festival actively advertising another festival on one of its stages. And personally I would never have known that these parties exist in south Africa until I saw this guys talk. We also caught another discussion where one of the brothers who set up boom was on stage with the main organiser of fusion (which is the largest trance and art festival in Europe, held in germany), and also the woman who set up and runs burning man in America. All three of them were sat on stage together discussing differences and lessons they have learnt from each others festivals and ways they can improve their own parties from the example of each other. They also talked briefly about the possibility of doing collaborative work and linking up to get people together for even bigger festivals, which would be a very exciting thing to see if they could work out the logistics of it. Like I say this is fairly unique in the world of festivals, this unconditional advertisement of other scenes and parties happening around the world, and I think this selfless way of advertising each others parties purely with the intention of making the psytrance scene bigger and better is why so many people are able to find out about festivals all around the world. That and we now live in a very technological age and there are all kinds of internet groups and forums set up to let people know where and when these parties are happening, whichever country they are in.  I think if there ever was a truly universal sound, it would be the sound of psytrance. I doubt there are many other festivals on earth that could claim to have such a multi-cultural and ethnically diverse group of attendees. Sure more people in the world listen to justin beeber than psytrance, but im betting that whatever country he plays in, the stadium is mainly full of 12-16 year old screaming girls from the exact country he is playing in. These parties seem to happen everywhere in all corners of the world; from the tops of mountains on islands in Thailand, to the foothills of the Himalayas in Nepal; deserts in Portugal, to the Australian bush; along the banks of the Amazon in brazil, to the alps in Switzerland. But no matter where they seem to be held they always have a complete mix of ethnicity and race in attendance.

    This complete mix of languages and races make this next point, which tony Andrews actually mentioned in his speech on the first night, all the more impressive; there is litereally no litter at this festival. that might not sound that amazing to those who havnt ever attended a large scale music festival before, and I must say I hadn’t really noticed until tony made a point of mentioning it when talking about the ethos of the festival, but its actually quite an extrodinary thing. Even at beatherder in the uk, which is about a quarter the size of this, by the time the sun had gone down on the first night you were sidestepping discarded half eaten kebabs and pizzas all around the the food stands, crunching on cans of cider while trying to dance in front of the main stages and the portaloos had piss all over the seat, half drunk cans of beer floating in the blocked up sinks and toilet paper and god knows what else all over the floor. But at boom the place was literally spotless. There was obviously a few discarded cans and bottles of water in the dance temple, but considering they had several hundred acres of grass and shrubland to look after it was largely litter free. And this wasn’t because they had an army of people going around and picking up every single piece of litter as it is dropped, but that somehow the people at boom have managed to install the concept that this is OUR land and we don’t litter it. Even the compost toilets were spotless. To get that message across to 152 different nationalities and languages is really quite remarkable, especially considering no other festival seems to manage it (apart from burning man, who don’t actually have rubbish bins on site at all, you are expected to take home everything you bring). I think because it is very clearly their land and is an active project with very good intentions that people soon realise and respect what they are doing so try to conserve it as much as possible.  It was nice to see anyway.

   So in conclusion I would say that boom is definitely not for everyone; but if you are willing to look past the relentless, pounding music, the oppressive heat, and the naked hippies swimming in the lake and chanting, then there is an incredibly interesting and unique festival underneath, with some very honest and wholesome intentions. If anyone is thinking of going I have a few pieces of advice:

    Be prepared. This isn’t a pleasent green cow field on the edge of a quaint little village in somerset, this is the DESERT.  Theres no 24 hour tescos nearby, no drive through mcdonalds, there is NOTHING. Its just you and the desert, make sure you are prepared for that. They do have an onsite supermarket (which is the first iv seen at a festival) but it is rather limited and would work out pretty expensive to buy all your food there, but still a damn sight cheaper than buying all of your food from the food vendors there for 7 days. I cant tell you how glad I was to turn up in a campervan complete with 50 litres of water, my own toilet and shower (if youd seen how long the queues were for the showers, toilets and even the water taps then you would appreciate how much of a life saver this was), along with a fridge and cupboards full to the brim with all manner of food. If you are flying there on a plane I would pack very carefully.

   Probably the first music festival iv been to that I would recommend this for; bring a good book.  You wont be dancing to psytrance for 7 days straight, no matter how much you might love it. I easily spent just as much time swimming in the lake and laying on the beach reading a book as I did in the dance tent. Treat it a bit like a day at the beach, only a day at the beach that lasts for 7 whole days and has a multicoloured, psychedelic dance temple pounding out psytrance for 20 hours a day in the background.

   Actually go to the lectures and workshops. Most people iv spoken to who havnt enjoyed themselves have had no interest in going to a lecture while at a festival. im sure if you actually read through the program there will be at least a handful of things you would find interesting. If you don’t go to any you are missing out on a lot that boom has to offer. I learnt more at this festival than I have at pretty much every other festival iv ever been to combined. Yes theres some very spiritual and highly socialist ideas being discussed at some of them, but theres still a lot you could learn.

   Try to get there early. I was advised to do this but didn’t take that advice seriously enough. Its a long walk up a steep hill in 40C heat back to the campsite if you don’t get there within the first few hours. The first valley is a lot flatter and closer to the festival and has a lot more trees for shade, plus is shielded from a lot of the sound coming from the dance temple, if you can get a spot there it will make your week a lot easier.

   Take it with a pinch of salt and keep an open mind. Theres a fair few people there who take it all WAY too seriously. And a few strolling about the place naked who clearly don’t take it seriously enough. You will encounter some real, genuine, modern day hippies, it doesn’t mean you have to be one to enjoy it though.

   I hope that people reading this would consider going one day. Like I say its a bit of an acquired taste but I put it out there as possibly the best event iv ever been to, I loved it. And you know what, I hope they get their utopia. Id like to come back here in 15 years time and find citrus fruit orchards, vine yards, organic cafes using the lands produce and a small community of people living there completely self-sufficiently who have taken over from the original brothers but operate it with the same care, ethos and determination that they have poured into it. Its a special thing they are creating here and I wish them all the best for their future. If you happen to find yourself in the deserts of Portugal around the full moon in august I seriously suggest checking it out.