we arrived 2 days before boom and stayed on the campsite on the other side of the lake. we packed up nice and early on thursday morning and made our way along the road towards the site... only to be waved on by a policeman. we continued to the industrial area further up the road, and discovered a rather large queue before us. ok, we'd been expecting a queue i guess.. but this one was a touch bigger than anticipated. after hanging around for 4 hours, and not having moved more than 10 meters (and that was cuz the cops came and moved us onto yet another side road of the side road), and having walked as far as the main road a couple of times only to see that even cars there hadn't moved in that time, we got pissed off and decided to leave the queue, go back to the campsite, try again the next day, and if it was still as bad, i'd just sell the tickets and we'd sod off to a beach. we weren't prepared to spend 2 days of our holiday time in a car in blazing heat in a queue for a festival that had left me with a grimace on my face 2 years previously. but lo, friday morning, we drove along to the turn off expecting to see a queue still... and drove, and drove, and drove, and drove another bit, and finally came to the entrance to the festival from the main road, where there were about 4 cars ahead of us, paused for about 30 seconds, and then drove on in. we ended up queuing for about 1 hour before we got our wrist bands, so you can imagine our shock and delight. :) big improvement on last year - this year there were 5 car portals, with 2 - 3 people per portal. it all went smoothly, quickly and without fuss. the boom organisation had gained their first brownie point. :)

armed with wrist bands, rubbish bags, the daily dragon, ash trays and condoms, we headed on up to park our car and were met in the parking lot by the ron monster who escorted us to where he and the rest of our mates were camped. after setting up tent, we spent the rest of the day wandering around and getting acquainted with the rest of the terrain, and sitting in the shade by the water drinking cold beers, watching 'tent man' flap around for hours in the water washing his clothes, sleeping bag and tent, and having a read of the daily dragon.
we discovered that 'the wood utilized in the sacred fire is reused. it is from eucalyptus that was victim of the fires that devastated the region of idanha-a-nova in 2005. no tree was depressed for the creation of the sacred fire.' all trees were fed prozac. that's a relief. :)
Boom had a central trash detachment station with 35m3 containers. 'all the trash that is produced is prosecuted inside this space.' i hope it was given a fair trial....
and, 'have you ever been in south america? did you ate acai? that flavour do not leave you of the certain head? rests, in the boom there is a shop of acai!'. ...anyone care to translate that into english for me? =o)

so after eating some very hot pasta that melted the plate and ended up in me getting melted cheese on my hat, we wandered along to the dance floor for the opening act, which turned out to be some wailing woman with a backing group, which would've been ok if she could sing, but every time she tried to get to the high notes, she was way off key and it kinda hurt the ears, putting it kindly. afterwards, sensient played, which was deep and groovy, but didn't really carry the energy that a festival opening act requires. p_mac and double r.e.l. just weren't our thing, so we went to bed for a good night's sleep in preparation for the first real day of the festie.

we were camped on the hill in front of the dance floor, so could hear the music quite good. easy to sleep to - you certainly weren't kept awake by the sound your neighbours talking - everything was drowned out. :) woke up a few times during the night and was a bit alarmed by sounds coming from the dance floor *so* dark and *so* twisted, i was really happy i wasn't down there with a head full of acid. at times it really didn't sound like anything a human could compose. if pain had a baseline and a beat, this was it. i shiver just thinking about it. luckily i'm a professional sleeper, so no worries getting back to sleep and bouncing out of my tent around 6.30am (to discover that a colony of ants had taken a fancy to my cheese stained hat), in expectance of some nice bouncy morning music. unfortunately i didn't get it for a while, shawnodese played too hard for my liking, but at 8am electric universe took over and that was much better. i was so relieved, i even forgave them their guitar tracks. :) they ended up playing an extra hour cuz transwave didn't turn up, and at 10am a portuguese dj called fluxo took over. most of his set was really really good, until he suddenly went cheese-fondue for the last half an hour or so. freakulizer didn't do much for me, and to be dead honest i can't remember much about the music for the rest of the day, but according to timo, banel, liquid soul and kino oko were all enjoyable. :)

after a bit of a break, some food and drinks (we found the caipirinha bar! =o) we headed back to the dance floor at 10 for beat bizarre only to discover that the timetable had been rescheduled an hour early in order to make room for transwave who'd neglected to turn up earlier in the day, and that beat bizarre were just finishing! Bit disappointed about that i must say, they were one of the live acts we'd really been looking forward to seeing. but ok, we caught the very end of them, and then a dj took over... played a few tracks along the lines of beat bizarre's style, but train wrecked them when mixing them in - turned out to be christof, which kinda surprised us. his set got progressively heavier and darker until he was finally thumping out itchy-and-scratchy-trance and drove us away from the dance floor again. after chilling a bit, we headed on back to the tent and got another half-decent night's sleep. again, anytime i turned over during the night, i was happy i was in my bed and not on the dance floor

up at 7am again next morning, and down to the dance floor where we caught the end of trold. and finally at 8am, transwave took the stage! we were quite excited about that, never thought i'd ever get a chance to see them playing live. i really enjoyed their set, they played a medley of old and new stuff, although (and maybe it's because had been expecting too much) i thought they would've been just that little bit better. anyway, after that goblin played, and what a great set! one of the sets that gets into my top 10 of the festie. :) but the man that soared above all others in regards to performance, energy, music and injection of atmosphere was cosmosis - absolutely brilliant! not only was the music of top quality and perfect for the time of day, it was just as entertaining to watch billy zoom around the stage, wave at people in the crowd and radiate the most amazing amount of energy i've ever seen during any performance, live or dj. :) he could've continued for another hour as far as i'm concerned. and strange as it may seem, this was actually my first time seeing cosmosis play live - it was well worth the wait, and now i can't wait to see him live again. :) the biggest thumbs up mr bagginz!! =o)

and needless to say, after such a performance, i just couldn't get myself into ace ventura afterwards. it was good in itself, but it was like mixing chocolate and chicory after billy's performance - it just didn't go. matera turned out to be a disaster for my ears too – what a load of screeching twaddle! i've heard farts that were more psychedelic than the absolute pile of shite that he played. it sounded like 2 and a half hours of fat eric remixes. imho of course. ;) so although i wasn't very impressed with SBK either, it was certainly a bit better than what came previously. and so came the end of the 2nd day of music, and we waddled off for some more caipiriwotzits, the chillout, and some food, picking up daily dragon # 3 with the picture of a mudwoman with ketamin-donuts on the end of her nose on the way.

"MISERY! We saw human shit in the lake!" how do they know it was human? i guess they sent it off for dna tests. ;) no chance it might have belonged to one of the huge amount of dogs that were shitting and pissing everywhere? oh wait! no, couldn't have been, cuz it said on the boom website that they were "installing the rule of ANIMALS FORBIDDEN! Dogs will be not be allowed into the Boom" (in red letters). must've been the caipiriwotzits - i was hallucinating dogs of every shape and colour all over the place! ;)

got back to the dance floor in time for psynema, (psy enema? :) ), and *really* enjoyed them! must say that we had been expecting something a bit more cheesy and not quite so professional, but boy were we surprised! their music was excellent, and their use of video footage and samples was exceptionally clever and fantastically done! a must have at all festivals - these guys rocked! :) i can't say i can totally remember how anestetic played... i think he started off quite good, but lost my interest after a while, cuz i know i was definitely back in my tent and snoring around midnight or a tiny bit afterwards.

up again around 7ish, and was quite surprised by fungus funk. they were better than i expected them to be. i'm not sure what i had expected to be honest, but it was better than whatever it might have been. :) marko from glowing flame took over at 8am, and we enjoyed his set a lot - probably cuz he seemed to play a lot of what sounded like rastaliens and braincell tracks, of whom i'm a big fan, so lots of wiggling done there. :) And on to the Commercial Hippies who played an excellent set! That was really good stuff guys, well done. :) Rica was pretty good to my memory, and Lish turned out to be much better than expected too, but unfortunately we didn't really enjoy Pena's set. I've seen him play many times in the past and always enjoyed his set, but this time it was just a bit *too* progressive, so we escaped to the chillout where we caught quite a bit of Gaudi's set (which was really good! - a very interesting mix of music let's say), and some of Digitally Mistery Tour [sic] whom also played a beautiful set.

Daily dragon # 4, interview with Penta: "What did you didn't liked in Boom yesterday?" :)
"THE FREAKSHOW. Keep your glitter-senses alert for Alien Ferries and creatures from other dimensions..." so we sat by the water for hours waiting to see the Stella Lines or another ferry passing by loaded up with aliens, but we couldn't spot it anywhere.
The Daily Dragon kept me highly amused each day. ;)

I was unbelievably knackered that evening and was asleep in my tent around 21:30 and slept through until 7am next morning, when we got up to see Paul Taylor, who ended up pleasantly surprising us. :) Both Broken Toy and Z-Man played good live sets, and then we were treated to a dj set from Ma Faiza, and she really played my kinda stuff, i really enjoyed her set. Yotopia were also pretty good, and Sally Dolally [sic] finished the day. she played ok, nothing very special, with the exception of when she played the minilogue remix of massive attack's teardrop. so we wandered back to the chillout again, picking up some caipiroska's from the beach bar by the water on the way, and lounged around there for the rest of the afternoon with a couple of pipes and some opium. 8)

That evening we went back to the dance floor when gangagiri were playing, but i can't say i remember much of them because i got talking to some portuguese people and ended up not paying much attention to the music at all. :) didn't make it a late night though, and went back to the tent and got up in time for dickster's dj set at 8am. yay! excellent set! loads of positive energy, good mixing and bloody good tracks! biotonic played a pretty good set, after which zen mechanics treated us to some great music. i enjoyed his live set much more than i had at sonica, it was really good stuff. :) Unfortunately, pena didn't keep up the same musical pace, so we headed away from the dance floor again during his set to grab some caipirinhas and wait for andromeda to start. and andromeda were fantastic! :) they rocked! lots of subtle melody and funkiness. their jean michelle jarre remix is very cool. :)

unfortunately, their successors were crap. vaishiyas and mapusa mapusa seemed to play the same 3 bass notes for 2 hours solid with no let up. it totally amazed me that people were still dancing! but i think that was because it was the last day, so everyone just danced anyway, and because there wasn't very much shade to sit in around the dance floor, so the best place to stay out of the sun was actually *on* the dance floor. they really did not float my boat at all. monotonous boom boom with the odd colourless doodle over the top that sent us running away from the dance floor again. we grabbed some food, hung around a bit, and then waddled back to the dance floor for the end of celli's set (can't say it made an impression on me as i can't remember it) and in time for AMD (aphid moon & dickster), and *that* was the job! first time hearing AMD live and i was blown away. one of the best live sets of the festival for me.

but deedrah took over at 21:00, which was 'ok'. nothing special, and tsuyoshi finished, which was an acceptable set, but again, nothing very impressive, and his last 2 tracks were pure gorgonzola. it was fun to hear junya's remix of voodoo people again though. we were all pretty cock-eyed by the time it all finished, so we didn't hang around much after the music ended, but staggered back to our tents and passed out.

overall, i was happy enough with the music. you can't please everybody, and although i can say that i thought the nighttime music was Pure Evol, i guess there were enough people that enjoyed it. sometimes i thought that the lineup could've been better arranged qua timing for particular artists, but boom has never been particularly good at that. the sound system was *so* much better than the last years - none of the 4 stack circle sound that upset us all so much anymore, this was fantastic in comparison.

so, that was my account of the music and my impressions of it, time to have a look at the amenities and general organisation. this was my 5th boom, the only one we've ever missed was 2002, and that's because we were at the samothraki dance festival at the same time that year, and i witnessed so many major improvements. in fact, i don't think there was any one thing that *wasn't* improved.

and i think that's it! we had an amazingly fantastic time - we were enjoying ourselves so much, we were almost disappointed that the festival ended when it did - we could've continued for another couple of days. we spent lots of time with friends from near and afar, and met some new ones along the way. i'm well up for boom 2008. :)

big shouts go out to all our crew - tom & fia, ron, wicki, tony & jodie, liz, dan, goose & liz, nikos(tas), nikos, barth & ineke, and timo of course. :)

photos can be found at http://www.doei.org/photo/boom_2006