Well, how do you summarise a dreamy weekend on secluded island together with some of the nicest people in the world? Especially when that weekend also included a wealth of celestial music and hours of dancing in the middle of a delectable crowd of hedonic escapees of the mundane society of work.
The answer is, you don’t. The PLX festival is an experience you have to have yourself. Words can’t really convey the feeling. Just like the feeling of standing in front of a painting, something happens in that moment before your brain categories, compartmentalises and puts it away in your library of experiences.
Instead I will try to describe some of those experiences.
Scene #1
Imagine yourself sitting on the forest floor, the dry leaves broken up into fragments from last night’s dancing feet. Yes, although it is Friday, the festival began softly last night with a smaller crowd. You’ve just come from a ferry ride in the sun and now you’re sitting down to enjoy one of the many many artists you didn’t know before. This one is Vargkvint, whose music (keyboards and bowed saw) gentle washes in and out of our ears as if to prepare us for the magic that is to come.
A little while later, in the same spot, the sea water drying on your skin, Gothenburg group Synd (meaning Sin) puts on an existentialist performance which includes the singer addressing a head in his own likeness. A dancing coke can sits on the modular synth.
Even more impressive is the collective known as Fauna, also from Gothenburg. You can’t resist the urge in your legs to dance, even if the sun far above the horizon. Fauna have released a bunch of great, psychedelic, dance-inducing singles this year – hopefully leading up to an album. You’re definitely not sitting down any more.
Scene #2
Over by the rocks jutting out into the sea, there’s a raft with a sauna moored to the pier. People are jumping from the top of the cliffs into the refreshingly cold sea (well, inland sea technically). The overcast day has been full of stints in the sauna, mixed in with Stina Force’s invigorating performance on just drums, but with a voice that carries far across the water. Stella Explorer also put on an intimate and haunting show complete with harp – the complete opposite of that performance.
One of the highlights on the day is German artist Pole, who stands all alone on the stage surrounded by hardware. By this time the sun has set and the light show combined with the projections on the rock wall, operated by Tove Nowén, makes for a spectacular view. Nowén is the founder of the new festival Nonagon, which takes place on another island and had a wonderful program of audiovisual events earlier this summer.
Pole hasn’t attracted the greatest crowd, but I’m sure people are there, sitting in the darkness on the cliffs steeply jutting up in the distance in front of the stage. Pole is a legendary artist, first appearing with a series of glitchy records – 1, 2 and 3 – close to the turn of the century. Like Four Tet, who appeared around the same time – he landed on one of the big indie labels Matador (while Four Tet was on Domino).
The self-titled Pole soon came out on Mute, as Pole established himself on the growing IDM scene. The name dubtronica is silly, but that’s what it came to be called. Of course Pole has come far from his ‘humble’ beginnings, releasing an album as late as last year called Tempus. This is the music we get to hear at PLX. Electronic, with a beat, but slow enough for reflecting on rather than dancing.
Scene #3
Because there’s plenty of dancing going on later in the evening. As you walk carefully along the carefully lit and meticulously decorated path towards the southern end of the island – using art installations as your landmarks – you finally arrive at the tumultuous haven that is Satelliten (the Satellite). That’s when it hits you, that you are in an enormous crowd who have come here just to share this experience with you. In front of what looks like an intricate construction of superimposed squares lit up in shifting colours, stands the DJ booth.
We instinctively sneak up towards it like moths drawn to a lamp. In there is Jesse G, a DJ from Berlin who is known from both Tresor and RSO. This is probably my favourite DJ set at PLX this year and I melt into the surging mass underneath the laser beams. Jesse G is followed by the perhaps biggest name on the the lineup – Surgeon from Birmingham. Active both as a DJ and a producer, he released the album Crash Recoil on Tresor earlier this year.
Tresor have also reissued some of Surgeon’s classic releases on the label during 2023. Originally issued between 1997 and 1999, these three LPs are deffo worth checking out. His set at PLX is eclectic but never dull. It’s always nice to see someone trying to stretch the limits slightly, and if you’ve been operating dancefloors for as long as Surgeon has, it must be the only way to keep things interesting. Dr. Echoe from Stockholm takes over for the final slot and takes people right back into prime party mode. That nap I took earlier in the day was definitely worth it.
More photos from the Friday night are on our flickr.
