music events i've been to thru the years

• it was funny to escape ridiculously impromptu-snowy weather to warmer places, and then end up returning to decently warm spring weather
• the hostel i stayed at in london had a kitchen (amsterdam one did not, im not sure if thats a fucking common occurrence w those there or what haha, felt so out of my depth at first, but anyway), it was nice to cook some decent enough food for myself there, save a bit as opposed to if i'd gone to eat out or some shit
• chats n chills at the smokers at trance party (despite not being a smoker myself, but was nice to just hang in fresher air) - at one point a couple friends of friends there were chatting about how they'd gone to some scientology convention or some shit recently as of then, pretty amusing
• room 2 at tp had cool-ass lasers goin on. lingered largely there during ripsquad's set ngl, faery was on during then, very deep set (sound-wise)
• i dropped off lil paper cranes to most of the lot too, including evian and seretide finally, to cute reactions but idk how many of the lot really absorbed the cranes into their belongings so to say!
• nice spring-y sunrise walk back to hostel after the event. saw a couple undefined-to-me trees in full bloom
• the part from the patrick wolf solo show that's lingered in my mind the longest was the lil cameo from the towans (the hidden song at the end of land's end - i keep forgetting it's called that, have to look it up every time, and didn't even know it had its own name when i listened to pw more a decade back), performed differently than it appears in studio ver (shit's almost 20 yrs old, 'course it would be tbh !! hahah), was rly cool to me cos land's end is one of the songs that's been slightly more at the forefront for me from his discog. i didn't record it, but i hope someone did and uploaded that or something. anyway i was glad to hear a few other favs too
• and in general was pretty cool to hear different takes on tunes from his early discog (in addition to the recentmore songs)... recontextualization of one's youth :-D and also the occasional lil stories between songs, to the point where he said at one point during the show he's trying not to have like a talking show or smth hahaha
• did also get to meet a friend at the pw show, but only prior to the thing cos the show was seated and we were sat separately haha
• thoughts.page crosspost from when i disembarked in london: "young kid (maybe 5 idk) saying bye-bye airplane upon disembarking thats so cute"

• ended up listening thru frame of a fauna by ouri a couple of times while in transit within helsinki, from the harbour to the hostel and later from the hostel back to the harbour and while waiting to board the ferry. the album really hit during then.
• that reminds me the sunset during the ferry ride from tallinn to there was so nice... lingered for a while on the sun wind deck, listened to go oli go / cartoon smile on loop alternatingly. sang to the wind, quietly
• some handrail at the sun deck was rattling really rhythmically at one point, it was so funny, i was wondering where tf indoors the drumming sound was coming from!!! there were like 2 music acts playing somewhere on the ferry, and i caught the secret 3rd thing! it was very jazzy.
• was rlly cute to get to hang out w a couple friends at the club zero nite, again in both cases. one of em flew in from the uk, he had a couple vacationdays to use up and decided to make a lil weekend of it :,) the other a helsinki local, i've met him like i don't know, 5 times by now? either way was so nice
• the hostel i stay at whenever i catch something at ääniwalli (cos of it being super close, and the hostel rly cheap, at least for the time being) has some arcade machines, one or two of them have tekken 6 on them, when i passed by on my way to eat before heading out i lingered for a bit watching two guys play on one, one of them offered i come try too, i should've taken up the offer haha
• had a lot of fun during oli's set ! though i'm a bit of a lily-mix-4-process-dj-sets veteran by now, but being accompanied by friends and oli seeming rly in his element for this one (read: really looking like he had fun too, and he did mention later that he had fun) enhanced this shit by a lot, and holding my phone to my side recording the whole set didn't stop me from having a lot of fun!!
  • i guess i respect mfs that prefer dj-s that keep a steady vibe going or whatnot, and i respect dj-s that keep a steady vibe going, but sometimes girls just want to have fun or whatever!! long as there's fun had all across the board (looking at you, ecco trolling boiler room in stockholm a while back hahahah i wasnt there myself but heard of shit barely having been fucking audible). and i got some stupidly big familiarity bias or whatever going on in oli's case, but at the same time this lets me tune in to the subtleties! of the transitions and all
• had my light-up wings on my hat lit up all night pretty much (ig post about the wings, maybe i'll put something on the site too one day), the batteries were on their way out so they weren't lit obnoxiously brightly at all, had a few people compliment me on them throughout the night, and oli said something nice about them too when i got to talk with him a bit after the sets, but i forgot entirely what haha
• caught wind of some afterparty type thing going on, uk friend and i ended up walking the whole way, like half an hour or so, it felt refreshing (he remarked something about how he doesnt feel like hes gonna get stabbed in there haha, i take this for granted honestly; it having been like 6am of good friday it was really quiet in town)... we ended up only staying there for a bit, sleep was calling.
• it'd been sunny in tallinn the afternoon of the 28th which was really nice - spent some time at a tram stop between the bus station and the harbour, reading the book i had with me. listening to the tram sounds on occasion, the newer ones have such a fun eeeeee-(pewww) sound upon accelerating.
• the next day round noon / early afternoon it was full overcast and slightly drizzly there, but it was very light still, very refreshing, appreciable on a mere couple hours of sleep. ended up stumbling upon malibu on shuffle which hit nicely (so far out of love, in particular)
  • and then off shuffle i landed upon rough and beautiful place by mydreamfever (parannoul's main stuff has barely latched to my brain, but this album's really nice), had me feeling emotional highkey. lingered at the aforementioned tram stop for some while, while feeling some barely describable delicate interconnectedness of everything...
  • had to hold back tears, didn't want to embarrass myself haha, but then later on i of course thought about how that album taps into my heart pretty similarly to beloved cartoon smile, nearly bawled while walking, it felt beautifully intense / intensely beautiful. i guess this shit unlocked the potential beauty and real refreshingness of an average light-overcast drizzly day, for me.

guess i could blurb about last weekend's trip to berlin... it was a nice enough time
(though i sort of wish i would've gone to this friday's natural mind event of mechatok's in london instead that had oli xl, ecco2k and tohji in the lineup too, it seemed to have a cuter energy... ehh it is what it is really, and i'm glad i got to see the slagwerk lot perform, i liked otis's set a bunch, and found oli's rlly cool despite being a lily4 adjacent set beholding veteran at this point haha it'd simply been a year since i last saw any of oli's lily-adjacent sets and there'd been some evolutions to it since)

i flew out via tallinn which i was glad about, as it'd been some while since i last touched thru it, i like its comfy vibes... i had to spend the night there once again cos of having had a ridiculously early morning flight (5:30am or whatever it was), but i was okay with that. and also i had a westward window seat! the sunrise gradients cast that way were pretty. i hadn't got very much sleep at the airport, so i also caught some winks at the berlin one on some bench after i landed, before heading into town at a more reasonable time than 8am.

i'd been relying on plans of accomms from a friend but those plans ended up falling thru, fortunately i managed to book a decent and cheap enough hostel the day before so once i got into the city i headed into the hostel, at around 12:30pm, dropping by a nearby lidl for some food, and ate (cheese roll, protein pudding, pistachios i had with me) as i waited for check-in time at 3, and read the book i had with me a bit.

some while after checking in i went to another of the nearby grocery stores, ended up getting leibniz kunterbunt cookies to bring back home, some cupcakes, and a dragon plushie on a wholeass whim from near the store check-out haha, white with pastel pink detailing, and apparently it quite looks like falkor from the neverending story, though i don't know of the franchise myself but some people from a server i shared pics into pointed it out to me - i just really found the dragon's lil cow ears so cute, and its fur is so soft too.

did fuck-all at the hostel for some time, and then headed out to meet up with the friend i went to the event with, at an italian restaurant he'd sought out that was pretty much equal distance from both of our accomms. boccacelli am winterfeldtplatz, it's named. and there ended up being this whole ordeal with his phone being on low battery, and he lost the charging cable for it in the uber whose driver ended up no-showing at his lost-item request, and i didn't have a lightning cable on me with my power bank setup, etc...

ended up giving up on the uber, and proceeded to the restaurant. we ended up getting such a nice waiter - turns out he was from new york haha which gained some xtra points on him w the friend who's lived in the us for a while too haha -, and he offered to take the friend's phone for the duration of our stay to charge it for a bit too after we'd asked for that. i forget now what the friend had but i ended up ordering some spaghetti carbonara and tiramisu, the spaghetti was sooo good and rly pleasantly creamy - and the waiter ended up giving us each a shot on the house too haha and chatted with us a little during a break after we'd finished our food. overall it was rlly nice.

by that point it was late enough that we had just about enough time to drop by the friend's hotel room by uber and then head to the event by public transport. was a whole little journey, i mostly led the way with my phone map though my gps stopped working properly a couple times for some reason? and then (cos i'd not thought of the free shuttle directly between the venue and the nearest u-bahn) we ended up really confused on the final stretch of bus to the venue, so we ended up simply walking that 20 minutes' worth.

lo and behold... a late night (grocery etc) shop caught our eye. we went in, the friend asked if they had charging adapters (of which he had none on the trip) and cables. they actually did! 21€ for a set and a really lifted mood on the friend's behalf haha

so, to the event. we arrived just as a round of the free shuttle also did haha, and we saw a bigass queue at the venue, but the bigass queue ended up moving super smoothly, and the bag checks etc were only superficial. the snacks the friend had remained safe. we remained in the room the slagwerk folks had their sets in. bambinodj, money lang, otis, golin (live), oli xl. the friend ended up dipping from exhaustion during nunguja's set, at 4:30-odd am, i during europa's around an hour later...

sidenote: wait sorry hold on i got distracted, obsessed right now with a snippet from the aforementioned natural mind event, this snippet, oli baiting during his set with the long-known collab track of his and ecco2k's that currently only exists online in full via a full recording of ecco's dec 2019 tokyo live set (song timestamped, 25:50, has been dubbed rest my eyes by fans), apparently it's super likely to be on oli's upcoming album... gonna be so crazy, and either way the bait is so fucking funnyyyy

okay, well, this one having been boiler room though most of the sets are gonna be broadcast online in future too... except oli's apparently! i guess maybe he wants to air lily mix 4 in a more radiomix-type format eventually? i'm glad the rest are being uploaded, as i said i really liked otis's set, and will b glad to hear the entirety of europa's cos of having been way too exhausted to stay til the end (i was genuinely falling asleep, squatting leaning against a wall, a couple passers-by checked on me asking if i'm ok, bless that)

didn't really get to talk with oli this time, which is alright - he seemed overwhelmed by the amount of ppl or something, and in my hyped state (and being a little bit cocky with my handmade light-up wings a la the winged helmet on my hat i hope he didnt mind that haha) i didn't fully have that in mind haha so just a brief exchange, after having helped a couple ppl take a pic with oli just cos I Was The Nearest Person At That Moment, and over loud music, of is it ok to hug i was too shy last time - i would like some privacy ... i got so humbled from that, immediately said sorry and pulled away but i rly respect it. shoutout to boundaries

so... i reached the hostel before 8am so at least i managed to sleep a more decent amount before heading homeward. though i had to stay a night in riga too cos of flight times - flew to riga evening of the 19th, and took the bus home on the morning of the 20th, reached home by 2pm, it was really nice and sunny, hadn't seen the sun at home for a couple weeks or so.

once i'd got home i decided to head to the local spa and sauna centre for a couple hours after eating a piece of the biscuit cake the kids and my mom had made, that i'd requested they leave a bit of for me. had some sauna time, some chill in pool time, some mind emptying in the water and hot air. a nice end to the weekend vacay.

went on a goofy condensed music event catching workbreak trip.... 3 events in 3 days and 3 meager hours of sleep after each of them but it was very worth it hahaha

saw vegyn live in london on thurs, oli xl dj in berlin on fri (didnt know i would be feistily catching it UNTIL WEDNESDAY when he + the venue announced it), and club zero event with some bunch of ppl dj+live including ecco2k dj in helsinki on saturday… was really cool

enjoy some selection of pics i guess just cos i feel like it!

ended up losing the frog in berlin but it's ok cos i found leibniz kunterbunt cookies...

rogue intruder soul enhancer reference at the hostel...Just Kidding. pigbaby set was neato, vegyn's was really sick.

thought to myself how kwia's light-up wall installation looks like an eye, cos it lights up mostly from the centre and the non-lit-up very centre resembles a pupil this way. and oli previewed some tunes off his upcoming album during his allnight set, and the album's named lick the lens. and oli's dj-ed at that venue kind of plenty by now. kind of funny!

had only one sweet ginger tea, while waiting for oli to appear. should've got another during, would've been really cozy. he tucked the few lick the lens tunes among other songs, was like a silly little guessing game, but i got good feeling from the tunes :')

it's funny, i didnt see ecco a lick cos i was too deep in the crowd and with friends but can't get everything i want cos i did get a 5hour oli xl set hahaha; ecco played fifths by ingrate and bby by overmono back to back which made me happy lol but overall it was just sorta fun; got to chill with friends at the event tho (as implied) which makes me rly happy

maybe it's good i didn't have the reflexes to request cartoon smile from oli right after he wound down his set - it resonates with me deep (it's become like an onion of cute moments/times of connection within my heart to me), i teared up over cartoon smile like 3 times between the helsinki event and getting home, no idea what effect it would've had on me at kwia on 3 hours of sleep with oli himself nearby!

oh also its rlly funny cos i ended up getting a cheeseburger meal from hesburger, mcdonalds and burger king on this same trip... (respectively riga railway station, in london post-vegyn near the venue with the friend i was with, and on the ferry home)