Sunburn 2011- Day 1 at Candolim, Goa

So it comes, again and again, bigger and bigger.

Sunburn has been this ¬ever-growing monster in terms of size and scale, and those going each year see increased co-revellers—more than anything else.

This year’s officially claimed figure stood at a handsome 1 lac. Yes, 1 lac revellers because of which the grounds were now increased by 2/3rds  in size and now 7 stages adorned the fesitval site. Tell that to my legs that, that is good. The walk from Ground A (which still disappoints) to Ground B (Open, super-well planned and so conducive to such a big festival) was excruciating through endless sand. Somehow the stages on B looked better, had their acoustics sharper—and just the amount of space there, the fact that the ground was mostly flat made it a beautiful experience.

Ground A on the other hand had bad programming for Day 1 and 2 as the main acts were placed there—filling the place to the brim, a brim it already couldn’t handle since last year. It’s also sloping upwards towards the DJ—on an incline—basically means best of luck trying to get even a glimmer of the artist.

But if you for a minute ignore Ground A, this is probably the best planned Sunburn ever. The fact that so many turned up, and you could easily get inside (Except Day 1 and fair enough) at most times, could slip through from ground to ground with minimum fuss (just excessive yet necessary frisking) and there wasn’t a sense of chaos like Day 3 last year. It was smooth—background smooth.

Moving on to the music, Anil Chawla and Dale Anderson began a long set on the Litli Stage (last year’s Bar Stage with a big butterfly) and the smooth house proceedings grabbed onto the early birds as the festival wore a sober (literally no drinks served as of yet!) look as finally the big stages opened up with Anish Sood who brought out the funk and the perfect mood setting for the afternoon set on the Illa Stage (Last year’s Caterpillar stage with a little pizzazz and this year’s Defected in the House Stage). On the other hand at the Muah stage (A massive frog with big lips and three screens—and the ToolRoom Knights Stage) saw Ajit Pai work on his regular time, routine and tight prog house set up. Over on Ground B however—Boombaba was taking the house down on the Coollu stage (A superb mascot recreation with the psy-Owl rising grand behind the artists) with his psy/tech routine while Praveen Achary took a mature prog tech routine on the Cubezoid (3 cubes ala Deadmau5’s setup with projections on it)—best stage by far in terms of clean, minimalistic design.

Back to the Illa, ATFC+Shovell took a typical Defected house feel with Shovell adding those amazing percussions into minimal and deep house—pity the stage wore off and people ran away to Brute Force who was dropping his happy go lucky sound on the Muah and Liquid Soul started a rousing uplifting+psy set on Coollu, which saw many fans. Jalebee Cartel took the Cubezoid in a thick-bassline’d tech house routine which was tight. Petri Dish Project saw a superb live set at Groovedelic (which like the Arro stage on Ground A was beautiful with its purple streamer-gazebo look, real serene!).

Replacing ATFC at the bare-looking Illa, Simon Dunmore came and the massive DJ from the UK brought out the classic WHAM! House with huge basslines and synths brought some of the crowd back. Shovell now getting real aggressive. Jerome Isma-ae then brought his German tech prog feel to Muah for probably the best set of the day. ‘Reunion’, ‘Personal Jesus’, ‘Rapture’ and many others LIT the place up. It was tight, hard and driving—a true force of a set.

On the other side Ma Faiza created a mini storm on the Coollu while the fickle crowd brought out another insulting turnout for Nic Fanciulli—a true tech house legend who frankly at a 6:30 festival set (where everyone was looking for instant gratification) was a little out of place. His set was dark, brooding and amazing—just very few to watch.

Gabriel and Dresden then packed the Muah to the rafters with their hard electro+trance routine with everything from ‘Beautiful Things’ to ‘Sex is on Fire’, a proper new trance set with all the dubstep, breaks, electro and tech elements that you’d expect to find in a Myon and Shane 54 set. Junior Jack and Kid Crème at the Illa kept the Dunmore heavy bigroom house feel and continued while Laughing Buddha saw the Carl Coxian behemoth take the psy BPM right up—filling his stage.

Spartaque on the techier Cubezoid brought out the big guns and some of the lost crowd for an excellent techno routine. Hard—no nonsense, and sick.

Pretty satisfying day on the first, so to say. However—tell that to Paul Thomas who played an excellent routine to a combined total of 3 people at Red Square for one of the four venues for the AfterDark.

While we didn’t see Teso and Living Room, unfortunately—Butter was still where the entire crowd thronged…first timers…

Photo credit: Sunburn Festival