- My favorite moment at Nachtdigital this year was the result of something I missed. After dancing straight through Konstantin's masterclass DJ set as part of a six-hour Giegling showcase on the main stage early on Saturday morning, I was in desperate need of some horizontal time and had wandered back to the campsite. Not much more than an hour later, I was awoken by hysterical chatter outside my tent. From what I could make out from the conversation, Ateq, who came on after Konstantin and had hewed to the kind of wispy house and techno Giegling is known for, had somehow built up to Snap!'s 1992 Eurodance classic "Rhythm Is A Dancer." I scrambled out of my sleeping bag, stuck my head out the flap and saw one of my co-workers shuffling around in the tent next door.
"Is it true?" I asked. "Did fucking Ateq drop fucking 'Rhythm Is A Dancer'?"
"Yes," he said, melancholically. "And I missed it too."
This sums up what's great about Nachtdigital: incredible sets, epic left-turns, a wildly enthusiastic crowd, sleep's transformation from life-breathing balm to mortal enemy of transcendent experiences. But it also shows how this scrappy weekender, held yearly around a pond outside the extremely small town of Olganitz in Germany's south-east, can't really be assessed by the normal metrics of festival success. That's not to say it wouldn't score very highly on the usual markers—quality of music, production, location, crowd—but Nachtdigital is more about the weird and wonderful thing that happens when these people come to this place to hear this music under these lights. And whatever that adds up to, it could hardly have been better this year.
Nachti felt especially bold in its 18th edition. Rather than round out the lineup with a couple of big names, the bookers threw their weight behind a string of intriguing back-to-backs. The timetable, as much as it ever has, positioned the festival less as a two-night affair and more as one continuous party. The festival's lighting and projections, whether illuminating the forest behind the lake or turning the main stage into a swirl of psychedelic geometry, were otherworldly. The paper program—really more of a zany German-language zine, and definitely something you want to take home with you at the end of the weekend—featured a computer-generated, gold-toothed, androgynous figure swimming, hula-hooping and flying on a magic carpet in the nude. And rather than downplay their new, higher ticket price of €99.95 (raised due to higher GEMA fees and Germany's new minimum wage), the festival made the number the centerpiece of its 2015 branding. The crowd, not surprisingly, was down for everything.
In other words, everyone went for it, and nearly all of it worked. The back-to-backs were wonderful almost across the board. Ben UFO and Prosumer, perhaps the weekend's most anticipated pairing, had a four-hour slot on Saturday evening. Their selections were warm and excellently peculiar from the off, but it took a few transitions for both DJs to meld into each other. Once they did, they became something greater than the sum of their parts, and the set produced an impressive proportion of the festival's best and farthest-out musical moments. (Prosumer's biggest tune was by Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes, to give you some idea.)
Lena Willikens and festival curator Steffen Bennemann didn't need any time to hit their stride, however. As their Friday-night opening set at the enclosed second stage slowly swirled upwards in tempo, it was hard to tell where one track ended and the next began—it's rare to hear even a solo set played so tight. Ditto Barnt and Joy Orbison on Sunday morning, who could have been playing out of the same record bag. At the tiny Lakeside stage, which was only open during the day on Saturday and Sunday, Uncanny Valley's Credit 00 and someone named Usunov (apparently the former's roommate) closed out the festival with blissfully on-point electro, house and disco, outshining some of the main-stage sets from the previous two nights. Helena Hauff and I-f never quite found common ground—he seemed intent on playing Italo sing-alongs, no matter how much rough-hewn electro she threw at the mix—but it didn't really matter. On a program this adventurous, you're bound to hit a rough patch or two, and it hardly derailed the good feeling that had been built up over the previous 28 hours of music.
Solo performers weren't any less adventurous. I haven't heard a better DJ set all year than Konstantin's on Saturday morning, which started with a string of unreleased Prince Of Denmark tracks, then pivoted on Octave One's "Blackwater" to warmly emotional house and techno. Earlier that night, Traxx took at least half-an-hour to drop a kick drum, teasing the tent with psychedelic guitars and wacky jazz textures before suddenly smashing in an acid-house tune. In terms of live sets, I liked Map.ache best. He went surprisingly large for his sunset slot on the main stage, but his warm, intricately textured house provided a welcome jolt in the lead up to Ben UFO and Prosumer. Andy Stott, who played the same stage the previous night, was a very close runner-up, playing one of the most unhinged, freeform sets I've heard from him.
The weekend's only notable downer was the line for the Tent stage, which I got caught up in earlier on Friday night. The production aesthetic inside was worlds better than the clubbier look they went for last year, punctuated by an intricate lighting installation on the roof and risers stacked along the side of the dance floor. But it seemed to decrease capacity and cause a backup at the entrance. If you needed to use the bathroom or felt like peeking in on another stage, you'd have to wait ages to get back in. It's always frustrating missing a set, particularly at a festival with only two stages, but I'd say the queue speaks more to the strength of the Tent lineup on Friday than to any real issues in what's otherwise a very tight ship. Honestly, I only remembered standing in line because I wrote it down—the rest of the weekend was a blur of the kind of indefatigable vibes only Nachtdigital can deliver.
Photo credit: Cinemata