crucial

berlin karnival

berlin karneval2006

The Karnival celebrates multi-culturalism in Germany. This involves trucks with floats and dancers; good practice for the coming Love Parade. Soca naturally rules any carnival.



angola sound system. like soca but more dark. wicked dj. MC in english, some spanish (?) on the tracks. mostly just drums and bass though. maybe the dancers wanted some more vocals, but it had really rich energy. check the dude with the louis vuitton hat and scarf. so fresh. his friend is rockin german army jacket ! you can't see all the angola girls dancing in this video. shadetek notes that the girls had tribal cuts under their eyes.




wen a sound prepyar fe battle dem mus ah come 'ard ruff and rugged ! drums cum faster, bass come 'arder. any soundbwoy dem ah clash wit cowbwoys ah dead !

Yes, all sound systems boost up to 140 bpm and force the kick. Techno is taking over the planet though they call it soca or... line dancing.

Germans love dressing up like cowboys. It was illegal in the DDR so they had these secret square dancing parties. They still happen in basements on the east side. Racially its the same stock: they think "if we had gotten on that boat we could have gone to america and then WE would have been the cowboys !"

more pictures here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/timeblind/162039873/in/photostream/

The Goa truck was awesome. I was in Goa and the music there sucked, but this was much better. Massive breakdowns and subsequent explosions. I love the explosive rumbling in the low pass filter. All of my friends are too snobby to admit that Goa is awesome.



Inexplicable: one truck played Berlin techno. No decorations, beat up old truck, a shitty weak sound system. The DJ was not exactly killing it (he wasn't very good). As far as Berlin techno goes this was just ok. But hundreds of people in ecstasy dancing alongside for km. This is cultural bliss: berliners can be themselves with this sound. Not too many snare rolls. (break down to dark pad, wait 16 bars, beat comes in.) Angola or Soca may be more intense, but hey we're not from Angola so we don't feel that.

Maximum respect to the rock guitar and drums who played at full tilt for probably 4 hours. The peak was when he played ZZ Top's La Grange. Serious !

Of course the Soca float won.

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