Put On My Raving Shoes And I Boarded The Plane

I began my partying days in the death-rattle of the classic rave scene, when gigantic warehouses were taken over by masses of DJs and electronic masters for anonymous, clandestine, 24-hour notice addresses, first-10-tickets-are-free parties. We lined up months in advance to get those 10 tickets. We lined up hours ahead of the party with our fruity malt liquor 40s before the bouncers patted us down and chucked away our booze. We took a lot of drugs. A. Lot.

One day I stopped doing the drugs and tried to rave without them. It didn’t work – I sat on a stack of tyres in the go-karting warehouse where all the best parties happened looking at the room wondering what was so fun about all this?  What the fuck is so fun about this?

But I grew the fuck up. So tonight I went to Faktorý.

The programming at the venue this year is spearheaded by DJ Margeir and Kasper Bjørkeand they are doing it like the old school promoters of lore who rounded up their friends and faves for perfect sonic combinations designed with the sole purpose of making people dance.

From the moment Bix hit the stage, accompanied by a performance-art mindfuck magician team and his gang of zoological dance monsters, my hips unlocked from their standing position and my feet didn’t fail to follow. In that split second I ceased to give a shit about everyone and everything else around me and did not stop dancing for the rest of the night.

I did my best Claire-from-YACHT new wave-fashion moves to Brynjólfur, matching his shifting, impeccable history-of-house-music wonders with only three other people dancing. Then the room filled to the brim and we went crazy and nuts for Human Woman, reincarnating Prince & the Revolution right out of Purple Rain as a two-man miracle. The sweat started pouring forth and hands started flying up in the air when our booker extraordinaire Kasper Bjørke made for the stage with his glorious sounds. Without a moment to breathe in between the bodies kept packing in and moving faster and harder for DFA Records sweetheart Tim Sweeney who went the retro route of two turntables and a box of hot wax. Serious kudos are in order as well to the night’s presiding engineer Óli Ofur for  technical professionalism, fantastic sound and undivided attention to the artists’ and party’s well-being. It probably couldn’t have gone off as smoothly without him. By the time closer President Bongo was up at the table, the whole night’s crew was quick to join him onstage to dance along with the party. Pretty soon their friends from the audience were onstage too.

And suddenly so was I, attempting not to step on wires or knock over monitors as I experienced my first onstage-at-Airwaves party in this hot, sweaty, sexy, stinky, farty room.

And I didn’t want to do any E or K or PCP.

And I finally got it: It’s about the party. It’s all about the fucking party.