#festivalseason - 20 years in, Shambhala is as memorable and magical as ever.

Every year I step onto the Salmo River Ranch for Shambhala (This was my fifth consecutive year) I'm amazed and inspired. It's not just all the great music – though the amount of high-quality, incredibly creative music is near-baffling – but how Shambhala brings the best out of everyone involved. The organizers seemingly outdo themselves every year with new instalments, a keen eye for talent and various tweaks, small and large, to the well-oiled machine that is Shambhala. The Djs, visual artists, dancers, hoopers, etc, all bring their A-games, bringing out their finest beats, strokes and moves to the funky proceedings. And my fellow attendees – their willingness to let the weirdest parts of themselves shine and bathe in bass makes me smile. Seeing all the little pieces of oddness people have found for themselves, the novelty we all gift to each other as we traverse the four days on the farm, is unlike anything my imagination can come close to. I am astounded every year and this year was no different. Please Shambhala, Shambhalovelies, please don't ever stop astounding me.

EVERYONE HAD TO DEAL WITH THE FIRES. WELL DONE, EVERYONE.

There have been many stories about the Sunday cancellation/evacuation/cancellation of the evacuation. The good homies at Betty & Kora just put out a great breakdown of the timeline and events of the whole thing. There's nothing more to be said on the matter. However, what is becoming more interesting to me is hearing stories from attendees of how different people and camps came together and dealt with the impending chaos in their own ways. My campmates sat down Saturday afternoon for a very well moderated meeting that included a time to share our favourite moments of the first couple of days of Shambhala, in an effort to keep spirits high. This is when we found that two of our Sham-fam had got engaged on Friday night! In the same spot at the Pagoda where two other members of the fam had had their wedding ceremony a couple of years earlier. I'm sure we would have found out soon enough, but to discover this beautiful thing in the midst of what kind of felt like impending doom was a deeply moving moment. One that I'm sure no one who experienced it will forget anytime soon.

THE RIVER OF SMOKE

This is an untouched photo of the river on Thursday, in the midst of what would prove to be the worst bout of wildfire smoke all weekend. It's burned into my head forever now – the relentless partiers continuing unabated in front of what looks like the bloody apocalypse. At this moment it felt like the smoke would never let up, that this is just how life was going to be, gasping for fresh air in between dance moves. Obviously it wasn't like that, crisp air wasn't that far away, but it's a pretty good summation of the most challenging parts of this Shambhala20.

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#festivalseason - The Phillips Backyard Weekender brings the goods once again in year 5.

In a very short time, the Phillips Backyard Weekender has grown into a calendar-mark-worthy event in the Victoria summer. Over three days, the Weekender – hosted in the back lot of Phillips Brewery, the brightest jewel in world of Victoria beer – annually brings a lineup that stretches across a staggeringly vast array of genres and moods, bringing a little something for everyone, no matter where your tastes fall in the musical spectrum. This year was no different – with a newly added second stage (Dubbed the “Picnic-er”) packed with local talent, and a main stage that rarely experienced downtime, the Weekender was yet another feast for those with big musical appetites. There was a ton of tunes to take in and process, but here are the acts that made each pop and crack for this lover of groove.

Friday – Oddisee

I've been obsessed with The Iceberg, since its release in February of this year. It's one of the most thoughtful, precise and powerful records of any genre, not just hip-hop, that's come across my ears in some time. A new Oddisee album is always a welcome gift to the world, but the good homie really kicked it up a notch with The Iceberg and I to say I was excited to see these songs live would have been an understatement. Oddisee came to Victoria ready to go. The sound was fantastic, all of Oddisee's intensely thoughtful and precise raps were crystal clear – overcoming an all-too-common problem with live hip-hop shows. Audience interaction is and always should be a huge part of rap and Oddisee kept everyone engaged with the show having the crowd sing along with varied, and properly spaced out, singalongs, including Iceberg standout “Like Really.” (I've been singing “notlikereally” in a loop to myself for a week now.) With all that interaction there was very little asking us to throw our hands in the air. In fact, he only asked us to do it once, which is the correct number of times to instruct the crowd to throw their hands up.

“Hold It Back” and “Want To Be Free” pulsed and roared on that crisp soundsystem, Oddisee's nimble raps dancing around and through the beats. The rapid-fire rhymes of “Killing Time” from 2013's Tangible Dream were a welcome surprise, but the incredible sets highlight might have been a trap remix of “Want Something Done.” The track was a perfect display of Oddisee's immense talent as an MC, reworking lyrics originally set to a more classicist hip-hop beat and shifting them to perfectly fit a hyper-modern beat. Oddisee would be achieve Lord status in any era of hip-hop. We're incredibly lucky to have him working so prolifically right now, in our time. I talked with a number of people who were at the festival who pointed to the good homie as their “festival discovery” and the world is probably a little bit better of a place for it. A huge thank you to the folks behind the Weekender for bringing Oddisee to Victoria and giving him a proper introduction to the city I call home.

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#festivalseason - Once again, Tall Tree was a cornucopia of sonic delights and beautiful people.

In the eight years since its inception, Tall Tree Music Festival has built itself as paragon of musical diversity, bringing in acts spanning across genres and helping reinforce the sometimes shaky bridge between DJs/rave culture and live bands/rock festivals. Way up high in clouds on Brown's Mountain in Port Renfrew, BC, the people of Tall Tree have created a place where musical cultures stand proudly side by side, interacting with each other in a way that is wholly inspiring. Every year I make the trek up and down the mountain and every year I am refilled with musical Love and this year was no different. The entire three days up high was jam-packed with incredible music and grooves, a near-endless aural smorgasbord. Here are half a dozen (+1) acts, ranging an incredible sonic spectrum, that blew my overly critical ass away and left a dent on my eardrums.

Note: I think it's time that Tall Tree made Murge's “Tiny Dancer” rework the official festival anthem. It kind of already is, but let's make that official, okay everyone?

ASTROCOLOR

Astrocolor's latest EP Astrocolor II – with its silky, smoky and incredibly smooth sound – has been indispensable listening since its release earlier this year. As I marched up to the top of the mountain at midnight on Saturday night, I wasn't sure exactly what to expect, apart from some smooth beats. What I and the rest of the packed Stump & Stone Stage got went way beyond just smooth beats. We were treated to a ridiculously fun, engaging and endlessly musical set a group guys clearly doing what they love. Playing cuts from both Eps (Including standouts from II “Push Too Hard” <feat. Fox Glove> and “Figure It Out) and stuff I haven't heard before, the group dazzled everyone in hearing radius with their uber-colourful dreamscape funk. The love that Astrocolor radiated from the stage was quickly absorbed by the crowd – like the music was water and the audience was a jubilant ShamWow – and blasted back at the group with incredible force. As I wandered back and forth through the crowd I overhead such comments as “This is incredible.” “What is this?!” “This isn't what I expected.” And every one of those statements I overheard was delivered with palpable joy and wonder. If you like any or all of the following: dancing, fun, colours, smooth funk, disco, house or jazz, you should 100% be trying to track down the next Astrocolor show near you.

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Ben Caplan & The Casual Smokers - Mar. 15, 2017 @ Sugar, Victoria, BC

Passionate. Engaging. Dramatic. Interesting. I could sit here all day using adjectives to describe Ben Caplan & The Casual Smokers' performance at Sugar Nightclub the other night and they'd all be true, but no justice would be done. This was a musical masterclass from Caplan, Canada's philosopher troubadour and owner of one of music's finest beards. Caplan & Co's music is ridiculously theatrical and had me captivated more than folk music has got ahold of me in some time.

First off, and most ridiculously impressive, was the band's punctuality! This may seem like an insane thing to bring up in a review, but when a headliner at a club show is on the stage at 10, as advertised, it is a thing of goddamned beauty, especially on a weeknight. It's a small thing that shows a respect for the audience and starts things off on a nice little note. From the get-go, the sound mixing was on-point. Volume distortion is a constant battle at smaller club shows, especially with a powerful (and important) lead singer, but this was crystal clear – the Casual Smokers loud, but Caplan's voice front and centre, like it needed to be. The crispness of the mixing allowed to crowd to focus on and bond with the songs. These magnificent songs deserve to be heard as clearly possible. 

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#festivalseason - An in-depth musical review by a Groove Rider at Shambhala.

There is no experience like Shambhala. The mountain setting, the Life-giving river, the PK Sound, the hoards of beautiful people, the ridiculous stage designs, the colours, the art...all of it combines for one of the most unique experiences any of us are likely to find on this planet. But all of this pivots on the music. The best Djs, spanning nearly every genre of dance music you can imagine, provide the soundtrack for all the ridiculousness and that soundtrack is the thing is thing that keeps me coming back year in and year out. There are many places to read about the people and the culture of Shambhala, albums of photos by people far more qualified than me documenting the bliss (Check the Shambhala FB page for a cornucopia of said photo albums). So with that, here is my overly long, in-depth look at the way I spent my musical time on the Farm this year.

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