Our past tropical beach experiences have been great. Our first destination together was Puetro Vallarta, Mexico. It was a 1-week all-inclusive deal and defiantly gave us our travel bug. In that one-week we had such a fantastic time and learned we traveled extremely well with other. Both of us love to just sit back and relax and do nothing except jump in the ocean to cool down. But, we do also like to take part in a few activities. Basically making plans to relax for 2 days then go for an adventure and repeat.

So came our honeymoon… visiting St. Lucia and Jamaica. St. Lucia is still one of our most favorite places in the world. We stayed in our own mountainside villa with our own private pool and the amazing beaches were just 10 mins away. In Negril, Jamaica we stayed at a massive all-inclusive resort and pampered ourselves, as any honeymooners should!

Our most favorite place on this planet in St. Lucia

As much as a great time we had, we often thought to ourselves how amazing it be to do the same sort of trips with friends. So we signed ourselves up for a 1-week all-inclusive deal at a mega resort in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic with our friends Karen and Steve. As stated before in a previous post, we had an amazing week with them. However the entire time we all agreed there was something missing… Good music and more friends! So you can just imagine how excited we were to be attending Sun & Bass together on our European adventure and meeting up with even more of our friends there, James and Christy!

Sun & Bass is marketed as a drum & bass lover’s paradise. For 1 week around 1,000 junglists from across the world fly to the little tropical island of Sardinia, Italy and attend daily parties catered them throughout the town of San Teodoro. It’s quite a experience to walk through a town where barely any of the locals speak English but all you need to do is shout out “WOO, SUN & BASS!!!!” and you will make instant friends with anyone wearing a wrist band within your vicinity.

The beach!!

Previous Sun & Bass events had DJs set up during the day on the beach, which was the main tidbit of information that drew us all in to set our entire European plans around this 1 week party. It sounded like our beach times in the Caribbean but with our taste in music and friends. However, sadly, once we arrived we were informed all beach events are canceled and will be moved to different locations. The beach bar they used previous years had a new owner who was not at all interested in allowing these beach parties to be there. I still shake my head at this guy… I can’t even imagine the amount of alcohol and food sales he missed out on by not allowing some DJ’s to set up their gear at his bar.

None the less, our week there was off the charts. We rented ourselves a great little condo to share, drank way too much cheap wine, made some great meals, sunbathed on the beach, laughed our asses off, and danced to some great music in the most classy venues we think any junglist will ever see.

Steve dancing with Jenna G

Our entire groups week highlight would be at Bal Harbor to see Jenna G live. Jenna G is a female MC and lyricalist who has made some amazing music and collaborated with many internationally known DJs like Roni Size. We all didn’t even know she had a live set at Sun and Bass until we got there and saw the finalized line up! What a treat! Getting to check another “I want to see” music artist off our list without even expecting it. Her performance was the most intimate music experience I’ve encountered. We situated ourselves on a small island in the middle of a swimming pool and this was our best decision for the entire week. As Jenna G quite often came and sang and dance on this island right beside us and sometimes even WITH us! It was one of those celebrity OMG I can’t believe I’m experiencing this kind of moments.

Our 8 euro VERY VERY VERY Strong Long Island Ice Teas

Would we go to Sun & Bass again? Yes I think we would, but not during a backpacking adventure. Seeing everyone at the parties wearing different outfits while you are staring at the inside of your backpack wondering how you can dress up your few very casual items. I would go next time with a suitcase and lots of fun outfits. We would also plan to spend WAY more money there as drinks are 8 euros each and water is 6 euros each!! OUCH!!! At least they poured the drinks VERY strong. Because of this strong pour it made buying beers a rip off since they can’t pour that stronger for you. Also, I would bring our spring floats to use at the pool in Bal Harbour! So, maybe one day we will attend it again, but I don’t forsee it in any near future… Attending Burning Man in 2011 shall be our next new festival adventure.

Our big group of friends enjoying the Sun & Bass!

One of the things we had always talked about with Steve and Karen was the possibility of seeing Roni Size while in Europe. Roni Size is one of the pioneers of drum and bass, and his New Forms CD is pretty much what got us involved in this music scene way back when. It was something so different from the other electronic music with broken beats and intelligent rhythms we were instantly drawn in.

Roni Size is a dnb legend. And when we saw that we could see him with the Reprazent crew, it was an instant sell. Off to Get Loaded in The Park we went to see him. Now we’ve been to many music festivals in our day, and have been disappointed from some of the biggest headliners. Fortunately this was farthest from the truth when we saw Roni Size & Represent Crew. It was pretty much the best live music I have ever seen, and I’m so glad that we saw it with Steve & Karen.

One thing about the festival I didn’t like though was the trashiness of the English people. There’s only one type of animal I know that lives in it’s own filth, wallowing and scrounging through the trash for food. We saw people sitting at the food fair and just throwing their unwanted food on the ground; eating in-between trash and leaving whole chicken cadavers while throwing bottles on the ground.

This shit would never fly at one of our festivals back home in Canada. So to enlighten the English during festivals, I’ll illustrate a simple 4-step process on how not to be disgusting.

STEP 1:
Grab your garbage in your hand and locate the nearest trash-can

STEP 2:
Throw it in a trash-can, many are located everywhere. This doesn’t mean NEAR a trash-can, but in it.
(please note in Canada we recycle our plastic but that doesn’t seem to exist here)

STEP 3:
Clean off your hands and pat yourself on the back for being civilized. Well done!

STEP 4:
Head back to the party and have a great time!

This used to look impressive

I remember 8 years ago picking up a copy of Knowledge magazine (a UK based drum’n’bass monthly production) and seeing the picture above with an article attached. I was in awe of the 75,000 watts of sound that came out of this stack, and every word of that article made you yearn to hear the bass rumble.

After hearing Hospitality’s sound setup at Matter Nightclub, which had better sound than clubs in Vancouver, I was stoked to hear the grand-daddy of all sound systems at a special Valve System showdown at the Indigo nightclub inside the O2 Arena. Walking in with anticipation of gut wrenching bass that you can feel in your spine, I should have known something was up as the sticky floor pulled at my shoes and the sound was a bit off.

Its difficult to explain in words what good sound should sound like, especially for music labeled Drum and Bass. Let me first tell you what it should NOT sound like. It shouldn’t make you feel like your ears are about to bleed because it’s so loud. It shouldn’t sound like it’s coming out of the muffler of a Harley Davidson. It shouldn’t sound distorted so you can’t recognize bass versus treble, or vocals. And if you’re the sound guy, you defiantly shouldn’t walk away from the sound booth during your headliners set, it’s your job to control the volumes. Loud is not quality.

No, you should be able to feel the bass through a crowd of 4,000. You should be able to understand any vocals that are being played. You should be able to talk to the person next to you because Bass and Treble are two different frequencies. This is what we’re used to back home with sound done by PK at many Calgary events and at Shambhala. This is the high standard we’re used to and expected the Valve Sound System, so hyped up over the world, to compete against.

We were sorely disappointed. It sounded like a blown out nightclub who maxes out their sound to get that little bit of extra juice. Like an old boxer who’s trying to come back into the ring, the Valve System just get’s its ass handed to it by current champion PK. If you want to feel good sound, look up a PK Event and or make plans to attend the Shambhala Music Festival located in Nelson B.C, you’ll not be disappointed!

PK Sound Setup at The Village Stage, Shambhala Music Festival – For the Win!