In Post-Soviet Goa, No One Can Hear You Psy: Part Three

12 April 2013 | 11:58 am | Kris Swales

We really hope Kris Swales finally found some psy...

This week's regular Thursday night psy party at Curlie's was a non-event. The Rave Cave's lights are on, with some deep and dark 120bpm prog throbbing selfishly away out of the system, but no one is home - either behind the decks, or on the dancefloor.

The next morning I returned for breakfast, and found a poster taped to a nearby tree. A psy gig had also happened several beaches north last night. (MISSED GIG COUNT: 3!)

(If you want a recap of Swales' Goa shenanigans, check out Part One and Two)

This was starting to get just a bit fucking ridiculous - one night left on the Goa beaches, and barely a squiggly bassline to point a stick at. I was going to find myself a party for the night or die trying, which meant hiring a scooter and doing the rounds of the nearby beaches in the hope of finding another pole poster lead.

Whatever visions or expectations you have of Goa are probably wrong. There are (mostly) pristine stretches of sand and beach shacks galore, but step inland from the shore of Palolem or Anjuna and you're right back in rural India. A glitter strip a la Miami or the Gold Coast this most certainly ain't.

Farmers sell their stock from tin sheds 300 metres from the beach breaks. Wild boar dart out from behind aluminium siding, dodging goats on their way. Dirt paths turn into laneways turn into winding single file bitumen tracks turn into dual lane roads, which wind through fields that look like the set of Tropic Thunder. The countryside is dotted with Hindu temples, Christian churches and roadside chapels. Only the central capital Panaji feels anything like India's major city centres.

I drove my scooter a few Ks north and found a place that I'd read about - Club 9 Bar at South Vagator. Paydirt. There's a techno party on tonight, the "The Last Pirate Techno Shot Of The Season" to be precise.

Well arr-me-fukn-hearties! Especially when you take into account I spied another flyer there for a trance party that had happened last night (MISSED GIG COUNT: 4!), another trance party happening at nearby Hill Top around the time I was touching down in Mumbai in two days (MISSED GIG COUNT: 5!), and the real clincher - an Easter Saturday gig at Hill Top featuring DJ sets from Juno Reactor and Ace Ventura (MISSED GIG COUNT: 6!), which happened right around the time I was sitting in Bumfuck, Goa pulling my dick last weekend. Siiiiigh.

At the northern end of Goa, I spotted a massive billboard for WhatsUpGoa.com, the local version of an events and entertainment guide. Where the fuck was this billboard when I needed it a week ago?

The sign was erected on a large plain, which a small tent city had began to assemble around. I stopped to snap it because this scene, to me, was the very definition of the contrasts of India. The inhabitants of the tents hurried out to see me. I handed the young boy a note for his family. They were all smiling. I scooted away, again completely bewildered by this country.

Sunset was the signal to return to 9 Bar. Spaced-out techno was emerging from within its walls, and loudly. I walked inside, down a narrow cave-like corridor, to find not just a bar but a fully-fledged club space.

If there'd been a nightclub in The Flintstones, plonked on a cliff overlooking the Arabian Sea with a dusty dancefloor covered by coloured sashes flowing out from a central maypole, then Club 9 Bar would be the place. The opening DJ played to tumbleweeds not long after the 4pm doors, with a few of his entourage dotting the seating that surrounded the floor.

A smattering of hardy souls slowly filtered onto the dust bowl, with 50 people on a floor fit for 3000 by 7:30pm. The DJ's sound was reminiscent of Dubfire - crisp hats, off-beat one-note basslines, and soundscapes generally more appropriate for 4am K-hole expeditions than this early in proceedings. But it worked, and it worked well, and I didn't care because OMFG I'd finally found some tunes I could dance to in a non-ironic fashion.

The next DJ was better, taking things into more psychedelic realms; techno as constructed by producers who like to explore the full stereo spectrum with random hisses, blips and swirls once they've established the basics. The mixing was rudimentary, the tuneage was solid, the vibe was picking up.

An impossibly skinny group of Russian girls came, danced like model extras in a film about coke-dealing loan sharks, and disappeared. A fire twirler performed at the rear of the dancefloor, neatly dividing the attention of the 300-odd attendees between herself and the DJ. A Japanese tourist and two locals passed a chillum around in the lounge area. A British guy chuckled to himself as his mate attempted to tune a Russian whose friend quickly escaped to the dancefloor.

As I danced, eyes closed and now lost in the vibe, a hand tapped me on the shoulder. I turned to see a forty-something gent, dressed in long pants and a floppy hat, the lean and tanned body under his thick covering of hair giving him away as a local inhabitant. He's Italian, has been living here for 18 months, and between his broken English and my never-working Italian, we got nowhere fast.

"Is this the best club in Goa?" I asked, and he shook his head. "Noooo," he said, reaching for his pocket and pulling out a half-sized business card. In the dark I could make out the words "NO set timings", "Spontaneous sessions", and "follow the SIGN" with a squiggle next to it rather than an address.

I asked what sort of music is played there and when. "Not Goa music," he muttered, adding something about German and Portuguese DJs before setting himself up as if he was riding the tube at Pipeline. "I want to surf this music in, maaaan..."

At 10pm sharp the party shut down, Goa's reputation as a haven for outdoor all-nighters long since clamped down upon by the authorities. I wandered the dancefloor trying to pick up whether there was another party to head to, but there was still music coming from somewhere... an indoor space that I'd somehow missed until now. Not just a club, but another fully-themed rave cave with glow painted columns, a fluorescent stairway to somewhere important painted on a wall, and DJ booth accessorised with a goddess figure over the DJ.

The pirate behind the decks looked suspiciously like Scott Walker (the Brisbane DJ, not his Sydney equivalent or veteran troubadour namesake), and his music was doing the business - a mixture of straight techno grooves, progressive psy and rolling arpeggiated synth sounds that ensures the party ship inside sails a steady course. Even a faltering mixer and two minutes of dead air while it was replaced didn't slow things down.

The crowd was a smattering of tourists, rusted-on hippie expats in the 25-45 demo who appeared to have settled here from all over, and (unlike Club Cubana) plenty of Indian guys. The majority of the locals were in eyes wide shut mode, happily losing themselves to the music in much the same way as I have since I discovered the "dance like you're trying to get somewhere" style at my first rave in '95. But there's always "that guy" who spoils the party - in this case a stocky Indian gent in Miami Beach t-shirt and cut-off white pants who insisted on dancing away from the decks and directly in front of others on the floor, eventually attempting to latch onto one of the hippie girls with predictable crash-and-burn results.

It's incredibly alienating flying solo in a clubbing environment when your language is in the minority. Snatches of Italian and French and Portuguese and Russian and plenty of the local tongue were everywhere, but finding an English-speaking group to ingratiate myself into proved difficult. Even this surly jerk, who much prefers to do his talking in important places like the Internet, finds it a little tough being in the middle of a dancefloor with no one to turn to and say "TUUUUUUUNE!" when the need arises (as it often does).

The Goan Scott Walker cleared the decks, replaced by a chap kicking the techno rollers up to that no-mans-land of tempos circa 140bpm. You know the one - you can't quite lock into a halftime groove, but can't leap about on the beat either.

It was time to smoke bomb out of there.

I awoke the next morning and fished the Italian's flyer out of my wallet. Cirrus Goa was the place, which I investigated on Facebook to see when they might have something happening soon. Photos of past events showed DJs at performing outdoors, in what appeared to be a commune type environment... and there was a status update hinting that a party had kicked off there at 9pm last night.

Missed Parties Count: a far from magnificent 7!

And that, patient readers, is the one about the 'music journalist' who lobbed in to Paris Hilton's 'Ibiza of India' without doing any research.

The moral of the story? If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Especially in a country where it's impossible to Be Prepared.