TRAVEL SEPTEMBER ISSUE
BEATS DRIVING
THE 2016 MUSIC FESTIVAL ISSUE
YOU’RE SITTING IN A CHAIR. IN THE SKY. YOU’RE A GREEK MYTH RIGHT NOW - LOUIS C.K
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BEATS WALKING It’s that time of the year, one of portaloos and mud, thumping sound systems and day-long smiles. Over - priced hot chips, big-brag selfies, endurance camping (or Glamping). This is our Festival issue, a homage to the 3 day event (or 5) . For some it’s the electronic frequencies that beckon and for others the perennial rock band or maybe just getting there is half the fun. Getting out? maybe not so much, especially at a musical behemoth such as Glastonbury, in which you might start thinking of words like Alcatraz and Guantanamo. It’s oft mentioned that the first music festivals, atleast in the way we think of them, are the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, known as the year Dylan went electric and of course Woodstock in ‘69 where Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Star Spangled Banner’ was etched into the minds of countless music fans though if you do actually remember it, then you probably weren’t there as the adage goes. Hey Instagram, it’s your line.
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PICK IT, PACK IT FIRE IT UP... Cypress Hill played Woodstock back in ‘ 94. Man, what a ride. By Emily Walz GLASTONBURY SURVIVAL KIT 5 days in the English country side. Oh that sounds lovely. By Stevie Weble TWO BEEF PATTIES AND A MICROPHONE The Ultimate Festival litmus test. How does your weekend stack up? By Karl Webster
IF BASS DROPS IN THE WOODS... Yes it most certainly does. Make noise that is.The best festivals across Asia in 2016. By Steve Weeble ANNOYING TRAVELLER PROFILE: THE JACK KEROUAC WANNABE Shirtless, wearing a pair of Hawaiian-patterned board shorts, he seems to be a common fixture in many hostels. By Adam Watts REAR END PHILOSOPHY The humble bumper sticker. Sometimes political, sometimes religious but always a liitle bit wrong. By Adrian Martin
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INTERVIEW DREW RESSLER Coachella, Ultra, Future Music... If you’ve heard of it, he’s shot it. By Emily Walz FELIPE PASSOLAS Careers 101. Start in international finance, travel across Mongolia, photograph Ukranian militia. Perfect. By Karl Webster.
CONTRIBUTORS KARL WEBSTER Karl is a freelance writer having worked across a range of fields from journalism and novels to comedy sketches and scripts for BBC Radio 4, Warner Brothers and the British government.
EMILY WALZ Emily Walz is an American Midwesterner, ex-China expat, retired college radio DJ, occasional food critic, freelance book reviewer, writer, and policy researcher based in Washington, D.C.
ADAM WATTS Adam, a.k.a Chirpy Wilberforce is a travel blogger from the UK who is on a mission to rid the world of travel with flowery descriptions, reviews of hotel restaurants, posts about inspirational gap years and new lives as ex-pats. STEVIE WEBLE A writer and web developer he has written and edited for some of the world’s biggest news organizations from The Wall Street Journal to Lonely Planet Traveller and many in-between.
WRITING FOR TRAVEL NOW MAGAZINE As we are moving to a monthly publishing schedule, we are always on the lookout for up and coming, talented and well travelled writers and photographers that can supply quality content. Ideally both. We also pay for that content though the amount varies and is subject to a number of conditions. Feel free to visit our contact page at travelnowmag.net/contact for more information
Travel Now! Magazine is published by Spine publishing. ScreenWorks, 22 Highbury Grove, Islington, London N5 2EF
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2 BEEF PATTIES & A MICRPHONE
In 1986, British financial masthead, The Economist presented the world with the Big Mac index: A global indicator of a nations economic state of affairs but what about the festival experience, what applies there? BY KARL WEBSTER
THE-UNEXPECTED-DELUGE-INDEX
SCORE
9
Not burgers but raincoats. Waterproofs. Mackintoshes. Whatever you want to call them, if they’re in plentiful supply, your festival’s probably a washout, weather-wise. But sometimes a high mud/crack index can make your day. Like that time at Burning Man - you remember - the sun burning into our flesh as we danced barefoot in the sand you were so fucked up, man, covered in pine cones, speaking Paiute - then someone saw the cloud. Like some monumental mother-ship, the rain cloud crept towards us with the promise of wet relief. An hour later it finally arrived and 10,000 people danced it across the desert. Diluted suntan lotion made our eyes sting like paper-cuts but we didn’t care. And to be fair, few of us wore macs.
THE FLYING PORT-A-LOO INDEX SCORE
6.2
Every festival is a series of choices, some of them good, some of them bad. Except for Glastonbury 2010, when every choice was spectacularly bad. Like somehow managing to choose that portaloo – of all the portaloos – the one in the corner slightly apart from the rest, seconds before it was elevated six feet in the air by a nearby forklift, to be carried to another part of the site, until you squealed like a pig and were freed; and then missing Stevie Wonder, Muse, Faithless, Gorillaz, Shakira and Chase & Status, but managing to catch Rolf Harris, and dancing along to Two Little Boys whilst wearing your Lostprophets MEGALOLZ t-shirt. How were you to know? It was a more innocent time.
THE KEITH-RICHARDSMEMORIAL-GARDEN INDEX SCORE
10 THE DARK-SIDE-OF-THE-MOON INDEX SCORE
3
Every festival has a DSMI. It’s one of the main reasons people who don’t like festivals don’t like festivals: the sanitation issue. A lot of these people are the same ones who won’t use the loos at work neurotic, OCD types who hover over the toilet seat with a hanky over their face. The thought of being locked in a steaming portaloo is terrifying to them. Sometimes they have a point. That time at Green Man. Was it 2007? When half of the portaloos were crushed by a runaway crew truck, and that same night the dump-pumper malfunctioned. By Sunday morning it was like the Battle of the Somme, if by Somme you mean faeces. They called it Brown Man that year. It was the year Robert Plant got a standing ovation for his song Big Log.
If you can, always stay till the very end of a festival, or at least till Monday afternoon. That way you can go beachcombing through what feels like the detritus of some great, surprisingly hedonistic battle. I believe Glastonbury three years ago was the biggest KRMGI in festival history. By all accounts. The first 100,000 had left or joined the queue to leave by 9am, the ones for whom ‘leave no trace’ means absolutely nothing. We prayed for their self-centred souls and commenced thereupon to scavenge. We were a team of four. Total haul: 148 baggies or wraps containing smallto-medium amounts of cannabis, marijuana, ketamine, cocaine and MDMA; two beautiful glass bongs; a meth lab; three helicopters full of money and a small island in the Caribbean.
THE-MOMENTARY-LAPSE-OF-REASON-INDEX INDEX
7
The worst fully-fledged panic attack was probably - ironically enough - at The Big Chill, in that weird late-night comedy tent when the burlesque dancers mistaking your drug-induced veneer of bemused incandescence for courage and willing pulled you out of the crowd and bade you dance with them, both seductively and comedically, but this was not within your skillset. Then suddenly you were aware of 150 people staring and laughing and something then just snapped in you and froze - just like that time in the school play when you were 8 and instead of delivering your only line, you just literally turned to stone and had to be carried into the garden for birds to shit on. The rest is just a blank.
THE-THIS-CAN’T-REALLY-BE-THEM-INDEX INDEX
5.7
There are few disappointments so great as your favourite band letting you down live on stage. It can be so painful that frankly, you’d rather they’d all gone down in a plane. Especially if it’s the first time you’ve seen them live and they’re genuinely so inept that you can’t tell if they’re joking or not. You think, maybe they’re ironically self-shredding for some reason? No, no. They’re just shit. They’re Blink 182 at Reading in 2014, a performance described by one erstwhile fan as like an hourlong stroke. They’re Guns n Roses any time after 1992, with Axl prancing like a tantrum-tossing tit-toddler. They’re the Black-Eyed Peas.
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PICK IT PACK IT p U t i e r i F COME ALONG... It’s been 20 years AND A BIT since Cypress Hill graced the stage at the re-imagined Woodstock festival in 1994 informing (or rather instructing) the crowd in the ways in which one should ‘Hit the Bong’. . SO WHAT’S CHANGED? BY EMILY WALZ
That stoners’ anthem brought them to the world’s attention and they subsequently headlined just about every festival worth knowing across the USA at the time. Besides the line-ups and a degree of corporate infiltration, little has changed in the festival world. As each summer arrives — in all its sweaty, sun-baked, road-trip glory — music fans from across the spectrum take to the road (or the skies) to revel in the borderline hedonism in which their parents or even grandparents indulged in decades past. While the 1960s are imagined as the big folk-rock festival’s heyday, there are more music festivals of all stripes now dotting the American landscape than ever before. From Telluride to Ultra to Summerfest, from country to electronic to classical, there are dozens of well-known events (along with a few more obscure — Camp Bisco? Salmonfest? Soupstock?). Some are long-running festivals that have managed to maintain their DIY ethics while others are newcomer corporate-sponsored see-and-be-seen mega-events.
It’s these monolithic corporate affairs that have truly transformed the national music festival scene, with Lollapalooza among the standout examples. Largely controlled by the global entertainment behemoth Live Nation Entertainment, it is one of the biggest and longest-running music festivals in America every year, putting it in competition with the Coachella Festival (promoted by fellow juggernaut AEG Live). Industry insiders have commented openly that these two companies alone are slowly consuming any festival that can be bought and for good reason: the North American concert industry is tipped to be worth a staggering $6 billion, with festivals allowing for healthy profit margins when you factor in vendor licences and merchandise. A three-day weekend pass for this year’s Coachella ranged from $375 for general admission to $899 for VIP. Nice work if you can get it. But whichever suits you, pick your genre, pack your tent, hop in the car (or plane) and join the throng along with the average American festival punter who, according to the Nielsen company, travels an astounding 903 miles to attend a festival by road or by air either within the USA or from overseas. In 2014, 32 million people attended at least one festival that year.
If you’re in Manchester, Tennessee and it’s June, chances are good you’re there for Bonnaroo. Not that the 10,000-person Coffee County town isn’t an interesting slice of American south-heartland – its historic downtown boasts an old courthouse and the Old Stone Fort on the western edge of town has scenic hiking trails and waterfalls. But for most of the year, these might be the only reasons to stop over in Manchester while traversing Interstate 24 between Nashville and Chattanooga. Come summer, Bonnaroo takes Manchester’s ten thousand and raises it tenfold. The festival’s nine hundred thousand-plus attendees make it for a brief moment big enough to register as Tennessee’s seventh-largest population center. Bonnaroo draws its name from
New Orleans Creole slang for a really good time, and that it delivers. The festival sprawls over four days and across a 700-acre farm. Its conception owes something to a ’60s and ’70s art rock concert heritage – some compare it to a modern-day to Woodstock, the granddaddy of all music festivals in the American imagination. As one of the pioneers in the American festival resurgence of the early-2000s, it’s grown out from its folk-rock roots to host acts ticking all the major music boxes: indie and classic rock, bluegrass, jazz, hip-hop, country, electronica, gospel, and more.
Half a continent away from Bonnaroo’s rural Tennessee setting, the town of Indio, California is nestled in a valley break from the Colorado stretch of the Sonoran desert. Indio grew as a Western frontier town, linked to the railways’ move toward the coast. This southern California valley – Coachella – stretches from the San Bernardino Mountains down to the Salton Sea, and is home to desert resorts like Palm Springs. It was once famous for growing dates, and while dates are still grown there, the Coachella Valley is now synonymous with one of the largest music festivals in the United States.  This fame stems from 1993, when Pearl Jam left Los Angeles in the heat of a dispute with ticket-selling giant Ticketmaster. They picked the Empire Polo Club in Indio as their new concert venue. Having thus proved its ability to host large-scale concerts, the club grew to become the site of the highestgrossing music festivals in the United States. The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, a hip, mammoth two-weekend pop-rock music festival, is the most famous, but it’s not the only show in town. Following hot on its heels every spring comes Stagecoach, Coachella’s country cousin. If that weren’t enough, the organizers behind Coachella and Stagecoach are debuting Desert Trip this year, a new double-weekend festival slated for October. Desert Trip (which some have dubbed “Oldchella” for targeting the baby boomer market) is making headlines for its star-studded classic rock lineup – counting the Rolling Stones, the Who, Bob Dylan, Neil Young and Paul McCartney among its big names – and for selling out all of its 70,000 tickets in three hours flat. The festivals are all big-budget, glamorous events that have on-and-off allowed for camping and catered tents, making the staying on the grounds for the music-filled getaway an integral part of the festival experience. Perhaps recognizing this, Coachella last year did away with its one-day tickets, and now sells only three-day passes. What Coachella is for pop music, Stagecoach is for country: a big umbrella with a lot of popular acts. Where Coachella has featured AC/DC and alt-J on the same ticket, Stagecoach has pulled the Eagles, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, and Taylor Swift in the same weekend. In both cases it’s clear that whether you fall on the “purer,” traditional side of the musical spectrum or prefer your rock and country diluted with a splash of pop, these festivals aim to please, stocking their rosters with more acts than you might otherwise see in a year. Aside from Bonnaroo and the Indio power-trio, there are many more from which to choose. Estimates put the number of current music festivals in the hundreds, with a few dozen in California alone. Pack plenty of water, hit the open road, and get ready to add some new favorites to your summer playlist.
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SURVIVAL KIT: GLASTONBURY
Last month I had the pleasure and dare I say, occasionaldiscomfortofattending Britain’s largest - and ARGUABLY the world’s greatest music festival and regardles of all the lists AVAILABLE, I still wasn’t prepared enough. BY STEVE WEEBLE
Michael Eavis organised the first festival back in 1970 as a one off event to raise some extra cash for the farm during the summer (which also took place the day after Jimi Hendrix’s death) and has of course become the 5-day event it’s now known as. Then it’s back to being a farm. It’s also known for a number of other things besides awesome music such as the Pyramid Stage, the stone circle, Michael Eavis’s beard, roughly 5000 Porta Loos and of course the obligatory hippies. and Mud. As with every Glastonbury, there was a plethora of artists spanning multiple genres appear at this music venue making it one of the most iconic music festivals in the world. However if you want to be in hippie heaven instead of moaning in the mud or if you are wondering how, in the name of Kanye West, will you survive this event, fear not as we have compiled a few insider’s tips for you to make the most of the experience. ESSENTIAL ITEMS Do a search online of what to pack and their are lists of all kinds but one glaring omission from all of them is the humble plastic bag. They compact perfectly well, are mostly free and will save you more than once in a variey of situations. Unless you are Kate moss or someone and there fore paprazzi fodder, dress for disposal and be prepared to ditch clothes at the last minute
BEFORE THE FESTIVAL Let’s make something clear – even if the weather forecast says just a ‘chance of’ rain, your bum will get wet and brown with mud and if you want to have a good time, you’d better soldier on with a British spirit of acceptance. You may have heard your mother mention once during your youth something about underwear and buses? Apply that knowledge here and pack like you’ll be changing underwear every two hours. You wont be but having and not needing is better than... Make sure that you cut your fingernails as removing mud from them can be next to impossible without proper soap and a scrubbing brush (who brings these to Glastonbury?). And, you will be eating with your hands, so…
Obviously it’s best to enjoy Glastonbury in the moment, but inevitably you’ll want to use your phone while on site. No one wants to spend hours queuing to recharge their phone so either take an old basic mobile with a long battery power or grab an EE Power Bar from one of their stores before you head to the festival. They cost £20 and you can swap your empty power bar for a charged one in the main market saving you a lot of time when you’re there (just make sure you get the right one from the EE store). Get to Glastonbury early and upon arriving, pinpoint the best available camping spot, pitch your tent and memorise it’s location by picking out some solid reference points and if you have any plans to save a spot for your mate, forget it. The best bet is to take your mate’s tent and he/she can take your bags then hope like hell your mate finds you. Tent flooding is a nightmare when it happens and it is always wise to camp on high ground, avoiding ditches where water will settle after heavy rain. DURING THE FESTIVAL Ah, finally the artists start performing and the crowd goes wild. One thing that many people do not take into account is the weather in Glastonbury, which can and will vary, often within the same day. Expect to be exposed to the sun for most of the day. So, apply sun cream, preferably factor 30+. In fact don’t even think of leaving your tent before doing so if you want to avoid a painful night’s sleep. The best piece of advice that I can give you is to have a blast. Glastonbury festival means 5 days of fun that brings people from all walks of life together but by all means, aim for The Stone Circle - a rather special place for Glastonbury regulars and definitely somewhere to head to for great view over the site. If you’re there on Wednesday night, don’t miss the fire show (be warned though, arrive early as it gets very busy). Another must is The South East corner, ancestral home to Shangri-La, Glasto Latino, The Common, Unfairground and Block9. This is the ultimate after-dark adventure into the bizarre which over the last eight years or so has became a vital part of the Glastonbury experience.It’s in this mometary departure from geographic reality that many world class DJs playing sets in tiny spaces there. It’s popularity is such that it’s sometimes necessary to miss the end of the headliners to ensure you get in before the massive queues begin. It is however well worth it as the sheer scale of this Bladerunner-on-acid experience is remarkable, as are the many world class DJs playing sets in tiny spaces there. And then there is the Avalon Inn, a lovely wooden pub which exists for just five days and is a must visit while you’re on the farm. Head for the balcony for a great view around the circus area and the Field Of Avalon.
Drinking too much leaves the potential for becoming one of those idiots to the side of the Pyramid stage who find it amusing to indulge in some sliding around. They are usually paid by photographers for these stupidities and although a cheer from the crowd or their picture in the paper seems very motivating in the moment, I’ve never seen one of them not regretting it half an hour later. They end up cold and wet for the entire day and when the sun comes out, the mud solidifies, making it awfully painful to get off. Their clothes are trashed and they will almost certainly get the runs. AFTER THE FESTIVAL After 5 days of fun, it’s time to pack your things and leave no trace that you were in Glastonbury. If you are leaving the area in heavy mud, you will find that cars getting stuck in the mud is a common and massive problem. However, you will notice that hundreds of abandoned wellies are scattered throughout the area. So, if you are traveling by car, grab a couple and tie/stick them to your tires (front or back).
LOOKSLIKE SHOOTER PROFILE : BY EMILY WALZ
A VISUAL DIARIST, DREW RESSLER IS THE GLOBAL GO-TO SNAPPER WHEN THE BASS KICKS Drew Ressler, aka Rukes, is one of the most prominent DJ and dance music festival photographers. He’s the man often literally behind DJs as they perform, and captures both sweeping, 180-degree views of gigantic arenas and the up-close-and-personal shots of the DJs backstage. Ressler, originally from New York seemed almost lured to an L.A culture, where more than a decade ago he started turning his photography hobby into a side job. Spending time in clubs, he began taking pictures of the performers – first for his own blog, and soon, for them. The side job became a full-time occupation. “I started in 2004 with my basic point-and-shoot taking pics of some DJs I liked while I lived in New York,” says Ressler. “When I moved to California later that year, I bought a basic DSLR and started doing the same thing at Avalon Hollywood.” That first point-and-shoot was a Canon G3, “a whopping four megapixels,” recalls Ressler. The DSLR was a Canon 20D that doubled his megapixel count to eight. In a year, Avalon had hired him as their in-house photographer. Over his career, Ressler has worked with the likes of Steve Aoki, deadmau5, Zedd, Skrillex, Swedish House Mafia, and Dirty South and been an official photographer for events like the Ultra Music Festival and Electric Daisy Carnival.
In that time, he’s witnessed the evolution of the club and DJ photography business. When he was first frequenting clubs, photographers focused on taking pictures of the revelers, which posed own challenges – like trying to avoid getting drinks spilled on the equipment – and generally resulted in photos only the people in them cared about. Ressler saw this and decided to photograph the performers instead. Then came the touring trend.
“There was a pretty big boom of touring with DJs as dance music got bigger and bigger,” “Now that things are slowing down, in recent years, it’s a bit harder to tour with a DJ, as often times they use friends or photographers willing to do work for well below what they are worth. “ In the past year, Ressler has been all over the United States and all over the world, including Australia, Indonesia, South Africa, Croatia, and Panama. He speaks highly of the relationships touring together fosters. Spending time with the artists, “you learn a whole lot more about them and it makes it a bit easier to shoot for them knowing what they like and don’t like,” he says. Through all of this, the self-taught Ressler strives to capture the epic scenes that encapsulate the feeling of the show, all while dealing with the low light challenges of photographing DJs and festivals. “It’s a fine line of balance between the right shutter speed and the right ISO,” says Ressler. “I like to keep my photos very natural.” Even though it means carrying extra weight, Ressler brings all of his lenses with him anywhere he goes. “I never know if I can get away with using tilt-shift, if I need a low-light prime, or if I can use an ultra wide angle. I like the variety.”
He might shoot a few thousand images at any given festival, but he will be deleting extraneous photos from the collection as he goes along. “When I dump the photos to my computer, I end up with anywhere between 200 and 400 photos,” says Ressler, a number that he’ll trim further to around a 150 photos for the event, choosing the ones that he feels most capture the flavor of an event – while also managing a pleasing symmetry and keeping the key figures in focus. Often, the set will include his signature 180-degree views over the shoulder of the DJ, capturing the crowd amassed in the audience below.
“On the flipside, there are more mega
festivals, so I have been shooting more festivals than touring with artists. Though Ressler usually spends no more than a couple of months out of the year on tour, though he may visit many countries in that time. He recalls one grueling sixweek four-continent solo tour in particular: “I started by heading down to Australia for Stereosonic. After two weeks doing that, I headed to Manila for a charity gig with Zedd. Then a festival in Kuala Lumpur, followed by a festival in Jakarta right after. From there, I was planning on a week’s vacation in Tokyo, but Calvin Harris wanted me to do his UK/Ireland ‘Greater Than’ tour with Tiesto, so I headed right to Ireland to join up with the bus tour. After those dates, I took a fight to India to head to Goa for the Sunburn festival. After that was finished, I took many long flights back to L.A., where right after dropping by my place for an hour, I headed to the train station to take a train down to LED in San Diego for New Year’s. I was still (barely) able to photograph, but the weeks of jetlag made everyone think I was dying from how I looked.” The well-travelled Ressler still has a few new locations he wants to visit. Next on his bucket list is Alfa Future in Russia. “The main stage looks amazing to photograph!” he says. Then there are the locations he loves enough to return to again and again. One of these is Japan.
“I want to shoot as much as I can in Japan as possible, so I always look for ways to go over there.”
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IF BASS DROPS IN THE WOODS
01 Java Jazz Festival • Indonesia
The Java Jazz Festival is a 3 day celebration of jazz in Jakarta. With over 50 international and local artists performing not only jazz but also reggae and R&B, this event is usually dubbed one of the largest music festivals in Asia. The Java Jazz Festival is a synergy of music, lifestyle, and entertainment that has seeded music tourism in Indonesia. The festival aims at raising funds for social interests and since 2006, it also hosts a show of music and audio accessories, which turned out to be a great crowd-puller that even international
02 Sunburn • India
Held on the sumptuous beaches of Goa, Sunburn is India’s premier electronic music festival that brings together renowned Indian and International artists. With the introduction of the ‘Sunburn Arena’ in 2011, fans across India and Asia are now able to see the world’s best DJs like Swedish House Mafia, Ferry Corsten and Avicii performing right before their eyes. The whole event lasts for 3 days and each year, it attracts a huge audience of over 50,000 people.
03
Fuji Rock Festival • Japan It may not be a traditional cultural experience as the others, but if your idea of a good music festival is a muddy field in England, Fuji Rock may just change your expectations completely. Hosted at the Naeba Ski Resort (it was removed from Fuji in 1997, but retained the name), it is the cleanest mainstream music festival you’ll likely ever see. Alongside quality food and drink, the acts are impressive too - past years have attracted the like of The Cure, The Chemical Brothers, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Beck and The Foo Fighters.
Summer Sonic Festival • Japan What started as a session of student recitals in Midi school of music in 2000 soon became an event for many local bands to display their talent while it gathered a huge fan base instantly. As of present, the Midi Music Festival is China’s biggest rock festival that attracts as much as 40,000 to 80,000 visitors who flock to see the performances of more than 40 bands who have arrived from all corners of China. With less hiccups here and there, the festival occurs almost every year to the delight of its enormous fan base. Most of the sessions are conducted at various public gardens outdoors to accommodate the large crowds.
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05
Rainforest Music Festival • Malaysia Set to take place at the Sarawak Cultural Village in Malaysia during the month of July, this music festival is not an ordinary affair. It features artists from all over the world in a fantastic setting. Workshops are held in the replica longhouses, and audiences are seated on mats while listening to international rhythms blending with the sounds of the jungle. Evening gigs are performed on a stage built by the lake, under the open sky.
St.Jerome’s Laneway festival • Singapore Not a day goes by in Singapore when there is not a gig taking place somewhere in the city, a live band performing or a DJ entertaining the crowds that enjoy diverse varieties of music. St Jerome’s Laneway Festival is one such event that happens in the city-state and attracts massive crowds from across the country. The festival originated from Australia but found its way to Singapore in 2010 and has since then presented names such as Beach House, James Blake, Courtney Barnett, Banks, Royal Blood and many others.
05
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Ultra Korea • Korea Ultra Korea forms part of the Ultra Music Festival’s worldwide expansion, which has now spread its wings across the globe to reach 20 countries. This electronic music festival takes place outdoors and as always, visitors can expect live performances by a wide-ranging array of artists. This year, to commemorate its fifth anniversary, in addition to the already stacked lineup consisting of Afrojack, Martin Garrix and Avicii, a bass-filled Phase 2 lineup will also be present to entertain hundreds of thousands of bass music lovers.
Jisan Valley Rock Festival • Korea The Jisan Valley Rock Festival is held in Seoul in a similar environment to the Fuji Rock Festival in Japan. It competes with many other big-name music gatherings in Korea by offering partygoers and music fans in South Korea a unique opportunity to see some of the world’s most acclaimed rock musicians. Since its debut in 2009, the festival has presented international stars and bands like The Cure, Muse, Elvis Costello and the Imposters, Radiohead and many more, which is why it is quickly catching up with the Fuji Rock in terms of stature.
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Baybeats Festival • Singapore This 3 day alternative music festival organized by The Esplanade in Singapore not only showcases Singaporean musicians but also allows indie performers from across Asia to demonstrate their talents. What is really interesting with this festival though is the budding bands program, in which music industry veterans coach new talents, who are then allowed to perform at the Baybeats Arena and the Powerhouse Stage. Baybeats is undoubtedly the music festival that has positioned Singapore as a prime alternative music festival destination to the world.
Midi Music Festival • China What started as a session of student recitals in Midi school of music in 2000 soon became an event for many local bands to display their talent while it gathered a huge fan base instantly. As of present, the Midi Music Festival is China’s biggest rock festival that attracts as much as 40,000 to 80,000 visitors who flock to see the performances of more than 40 bands who have arrived from all corners of China. With less hiccups here and there, the festival occurs almost every year to the delight of its enormous fan base. Most of the sessions are conducted at various public gardens outdoors to accommodate the large crowds.
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ANNOYING TRAVELER PROFILE:
THE WANNABE KEROUAC
You know the guy. He’s in your hostel dorm, shirtless, wearing a pair of Hawaiian-patterned board shorts, and he’s telling anyone and everyone he can’t wait to get “back on the road”. BY ADAM WATTS What “the road” refers to is an ever-changing enigma, meaning anything from an unspecified spiritual place where profound soul-searching happens and existential crises are explored and resolved, to a straight line of tarmac backed up with three miles of traffic. Before his trans-continental hitchhiking adventure from London to Beijing by way of Patagonia, “the road” is anywhere outside of his parents’ house in middle England. He thinks he’s Kerouac because he has no plans, has done no research, and says he literally wants to be carried by the breeze. When you tell him Patagonia is in no way on the route between London and Beijing, he says “whatever dude, it’s not about the places I go. It’s about the people I meet. You just don’t get it.”
Once he’s left home, things invariably fall apart for the Wannabe Kerouac. After a few successful, easy hitchhikes through Central Europe, he ends up in Belarus. Here nobody wants to give him a ride. Day turns to night, his stomach is empty, and he curls up by the side of a road, sucking his thumb and missing his PlayStation. if the wannabe Kerouac survives these dark nights and you find him in a hostel somewhere in Asia, he’ll probably be telling everyone about the time he slept by the side of the road in Russia in winter (because he has to exaggerate now, of course) and how it was totally worthwhile to discover things about himself and was actually glad it happened. He might even believe it himself. Favorite book/movie/TV show: On the Road by Jack Kerouac. Because obviously.
REAR END
PHILOSOPHER Consciousness… that annoying time between naps
FROM politics TO religion or just FOR SHITS & GIGGLES, bumper stickers are an American tradition AS ENDURING AS THE ROAD WARRIORs parading them. HERE ARE SOME TRUE PEARLS OF WISDOM FROM A LIFE ON THE ROAD. BY BOB BAGLEY & ADRIAN MARTIN
96. Too many freaks… not enough circuses There are are so many festivals this could be applied to and even just life in general. You’ll know this if you live in L.A along with other US cities. According to Travel and Leisure long considered home of the San Francisco, home of the Odd-ball ranks below the top ranking quriky cities to which New Orleans is bestowed that title. Fair enough. 95. Adults are just kids who owe money Yep, been there. In fact, I’m still there. No matter how many good ideas you have and who your friends happen to be, that student debt just hangs around like a bad smell 82. Time is a great healer, but a lousy beautician There’s that moment in every young man’s life where, after a three day adventure you emerge on a monday morning pondering the great weekend you had and it shows. It’s only after that strange look the normally cute-and-chatty barista whom you get you fix from gives you that look, you realise that you should have gone for the Nescafe that day. 80. Give me coffee and no one will get hurt Please read entry 82 76. I’m out of bed and dressed… what more do you want? Don’t worry, we feel your pain. Your boss probably spent the weekend doing crunches at the gym followed by dubious amounts of green magma followed by 6 hours of mind-boggling body contortions on a yoga mat while you were still giving hugs and contemplating the universe. And now you’re expected to actually do something constructive. The nerve! 68. A journey of a thousand miles begins at an ATM/Cash machine Now is the summer of our discontent. It’s my summation that these words were first spoken by Mr Shakespeare upon checking the balance of his leather pouch mid-way through what would have been the Glastonbury of his day.
66. I started out with nothing… I still have most of it This will hit home with many readers particularly with those that just finished college/university. Upon receing your tax return you discover your income exactly matched your outgoings. But at least Facebook is free. 63. It’s lonely at the top, but you eat better You studied, you partied, you graduated, partied some more and now it’s time to get serious with your career. It’s a shame your buddies never had that epiphany as they’re still living the hedonistic life, turning up at your house at the end of each month because they know you have a monthly paycheck. 54. Hard work has a future payoff… laziness pays off now. If you relate to this then you are most likely to be one of the ‘Buddies’ from #63 47. Ambivalent? Well yes and no Hmmm, should I take that role and Goldman Sachs or invest in the Taco fusion food truck like my buddies suggested. What a conundrum! 03. Lead me not into temptation, I can find it myself. ‘Nuff said.
PENDULUM For Felipe Passolas, life is not something that stands still
INTERVIEW: BY KARL WEBSTER
Rather it’s always on the move and must be pursued and captured before it gets away. Capturing life for Felipe means not only experiencing it firsthand and becoming immersed in the sights, sounds, smells and conversations of a particular place or event – it also means taking pictures. For the seven years that Felipe has been travelling as a professional photojournalist, he has tended to specialise in extremes. From the searing, scorching desert heat of Central Asia to the howling ferocity of northern Norway’s destructive cyclones; from vicious, blinding African sandstorms to the suffocating humidity of subtropical Latin America, Felipe feels that life is at its most fascinating where human beings are forced to adapt and to struggle in order to survive and more often it’s the unpredictability of those very human beings that tends to provide the most dangerous situations. This is the first insight I get into Felipes dual life as he informs me of his experience of border conflicts past and present from Colombia to Syria. “In terms of wild nature, Mongolia was hard because I was alone in the jungle, while in Norway or the Amazon I always made sure I was having somehow some local closer to me to ask for support in case of emergency.” Passolas is also something of a contradiction. As well as being one of life’s true adventurers – never happier than when he’s riding a horse through the vast, wild grasslands of Mongolia or hiding out from election-riots in Senegal – he also has a solid background in finance and worked for many years as a financial analyst and then a prop trader. So how on earth did he make the transition from the trading floor to photographing rainforest tree-frogs or Russian militiamen?
”I was living in Osaka, this huge megalopolis in Japan surrounded by millions of people and quite frequently, my friend Simon and I would talk about escaping the glass jungle for the comparative freedom of Mongolia (2 people per square kilometre), though admittedly, it was an idea that hung around for longer than it should have. In the finance days, I rode horses fairly often and eventually I just decided to combine the two and go” Naturally the notion of fear is brought up and being the pragmatist that he is, informs me of the necessity of fear and how you manage it, how it keeps you alert and focussed. “become paralysed with fear and problems scan escalate so the right amount of fear is quite important but it’s something that comes with experience and time, it does not come from one day to another. Managing that fear with you head makes the different of getting out or troubles or getting lost.” Iif the risk is too high, I don’t see the point of taking the photo but if I have the right environment I’ll push it a lot till I get a good photograph, but never ever push it too much, every time that people push it too much things go wrong. Keeping a balance is the clever thing to do.” Having recently returned from documenting the refugee crisis in Lebanon, he tells me at length about the impact of two million refugees flooding into a country with a population of four million “Though it’s widely acknowledged,we probably won’t change the world with a photograph but for me is quite necessary for different reasons. People need to be aware there are other ways of livings, that we are no different as humans, people suffer in the same way no matter where they live. Being informed could change your mind informing your actions such as how you vote. Information is power right? Photography is visual communication and one communication that last as long of the effects of the photograph. So the better the photograph the best of the message.”
As for staying neutral on any topic, that depends on the audience and more often than not the message isn’t the one they want to see or isn’t inline with their own views. It’s very easy to judge from the comfort of the sofa he explains to me as we a nearing the end of our interview. “People say since the very first moment we are framing something with the camera we are not neutral anymore, that could be true but the point is to high light the most important is going on as a photojournalist.”
“I have my political and spiritual views, but when I am working I am neutral as much as I can. “ With the Ukraine I was covering the Pro Russian side, while my colleagues were covering the other side and had the same issue but flipped around which happens quite often unfortunately. The way to fight that is working in the best possible professional way what is what I try on every project I have.” What would you like to photograph that you haven’t thus far? I would have a long term project I am not sure I will be able to accomplish will be documenting piracy in south East Asia. There are always project in my bucket list but that list is long and time is short” www.felipepassolas.com
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