Red Bull Studio Live Stage

At last Synergy Live was upon us: a weekend of marvelous music located under a mountain range so epic it could have been a cardboard cut-out in a 40’s Broadway show. This was the second Synergy I had ever been to, and we wasted time at Rafiki’s before taking to the road post crazy-Friday-afternoon-rush-hour madness.

Arriving at our desired location, we scoffed as our test-car Mini took on those parking lot bumps like they were nothing more than mole hills, before joining the masses through the fenced pathway (do I see electrical lines?!).Weaving our way past rows upon rows of vineyard until we reached the open fields of the festival.

Fast tracking some tedious details involving a tent and a lumpy yellowing piece of sponge posing as a mattress, we set out over the humps and bumps of the walkway, ducking under the Synergy Arch in search of an Electronica fix. Greeting friends at the back of the dance floor, swathed in white sunlight and feeling the vodka take to my bloodstream, I found myself twitching to glitch beats that seemed to hint vaguely at the reggae genre. Later Jam Jarr, a local act of which I am mightily fond, inflicted our ears with a couple of bad-ass rap lyrics embedded in some glitchy… um, Glitch.

One thing can be said of the Red Bull Sound system: it’s loud. So damn loud, it needed no tent to help reverberate those heavy beats across the crowd. It also made the soil rumble so much so, it seemed as if Mother Nature herself had joined us for the party.

‘Electronic’ being one of the most mysteriously vague terms known to man, I cannot precisely relate to you the extent of my love for those gloriously strange sound effects that seem to speak in a language only a chosen few DJ’s can truly understand. ‘Bleep’ ‘blah’ and ‘kah-zoop’ are the closest to a translation I can muster. But boy are they fun.

Seems every DJ these days claims to be Dubstep maestro: whether this is because this is true to their roots or a jump on the bandwagon that is the commercial stream of the minute, one can’t be too sure. I’m just thanking J.H.Christus for the gift that is ‘samples’ – anything from ‘the bare necessities’ Disney tune to a Christmas jingle keeps a sassy sister like me happily humming.

A swipe of a wet-wipe or two later (the camping version of ‘shower’) we found ourselves yet again caught between a 4-foot high Jagermeister bottle and carnival rides blinking with lights and screams. This will be the Red Bull dance arena, and its sure was busy with moving bodies; electro-addicts getting their fix as computerised laser shapes fluttered and blinked across numerous screens behind our God, the dandy DJ daddy. A multi-coloured canopy danced above our heads, pulling viciously on its strings, reflecting the unrest only the likes of Nastie Ed could instil. His sick industrial beats took my robot moves to the next level.

It seemed we did a lot of walking that weekend. The car to the tent, laden like donkeys– 1 mile. The tent to the food stalls for a veggie hot dog with greasy onions – 1 mile. The food-stall area to the Red Bull tent for a bit of boisterous bopping – 1 mile. From the smaller stages to the main stage to eye up the big wigs bands– 1 mile.

Saturday saw Swedish F.O.O.L add some South American undertones to the mix, as well as sounds reminiscent of the rave era. We also managed to catch a good old chuckle about the likes of ‘creepy-crawlies’ at the comedy tent before the sunstroke/drunken monkey syndrome took over the reins of all reason.

Sleep was strictly for the passed-out. Floodlights shining down on us from above like some kind of pre-Nazi boot camp, there was never total darkness in the camp site. Plus, we were fortunate enough to overhear snippets of intelligent conversation (‘I masturbate a lot!’ and ‘how many ANC member s does it take to change a light bulb’ were real favourites).

Come Sunday, we watched in horror as the wind pulled tents loose of their over-garments, causing us to jump in our car and drive back to civilisation like the stodgy old couple we’ve become. Synergy is certainly for the more hardcore among us.

WORDS: Rachel Briant

Images: Grant Macpherson

For The Other Half of the Review of the LMG Stage by Eliza Day – Click Here