{{{TRIPLE X}}}
            ========

{Name;{ {{Triple X}}
{Where;} {{WestGasFactory/Gasholder}}
       {{- Amsterdam}}
{When;} {{Saturday 6th August 94}}
{Organisation;} {{Oscillate}}

The first time I read about this
event  was  sometime  in  spring
when I was strolling around in a
Dutch      fido     echomailarea
(muziek.028).   In  august there
would be a big cultural festival
called  'Triple  X' in Amsterdam
which  would  include  a kind of
ambient/intelligent       techno
festival  in a huge gastank.  It
wouldn't  become  'just  another
rave'  but  when  I  heard names
like   Orbital,   Sun  Electric,
Mixmaster Morris and Autechre, I
had  become  'rave-horny' enough
to buy a ticket...

After a relaxing 2 hours journey
from  Belgium  to  Amsterdam  we
finally found the site which was
a   big   industrial  site  near
downtown  Amsterdam.   We were 1
hour  early so we sat down as we
saw   more   and   more   people
arriving,  resulting  in a large
crowd  before  the  one and only
small     entrance.      Another
remarkable thing that there were
*loads* of English ravers (after
all,  Oscillate  is  an  English
organisation,  which was a great
thing     for     the    general
atmosphere, altough Dutch ravers
are  wild  too  :-) The entrance
was  opened  at 23:00 but due to
the   bad  organisation  at  the
entrance  we  were only in after
midnight   :-(   But   after  we
entered the gastank, we realised
that it was worth waiting !  The
site  itself  was  *faboulous* !
Imagine  a  50  meter  wide,  15
meter  high  cylindrical gastank
with in the middle a large stage
with  loads  of light, sound and
big balloons hanging on top.  In
the  meantime  lots  of  visuals
(flying    fishes    etc)   were
projected  on  the  curved wall.
In the back there was a lit- tle
alley  leading to a much smaller
spherical tent where people were
laying  down,  staring  to  live
visuals  by HEX or touching some
magnificent    'ice-sculptures'.
It   made   me  think  to  those
legendary  Woodstock  Trip-tents
:-)

For  the  music :  as we entered
there   was  already  Pentatonik
playing,  not  bad  but merely a
kind  of  warm up for the groups
to  come.  In between there were
anonymous Oscillate DJ's playing
relaxing    ambient   and   some
intelligent   techno   (although
they  didn't  listen to numerous
request  from  friends  to  play
some  Mu-Ziq  tracks  :-) Now it
was      partytime:       Higher
Intelligence   Agency   hit  the
stage, I don't remember anything
from it, it just remember it was
the  first  group to set fire to
the crowd.

After  those guys had finished I
went   out   to  check  out  the
foodstands   outside,  this  was
very  well  done :  a variety of
exotic and vegetarian foods were
available  together with several
obscure   chinese  smart  drinks
(things  like  dear tail extract
:-)   At  least  there  were  no
hamburgers'n fries, a good thing
!   When I re-entered the tank I
also   noticed  a  'safe  house'
stand  where  you could get your
'E'  tested  to be a real one or
obtain  information and a 'black
list' with dangerous fake pills.
In  fact  this  was  a  kind  of
hypocrite situation as there was
a  very tough check for drugs at
the  entrance  but  I think that
such alternatives as this should
be  done  at  every  major  rave
outside Holland.  It saves a lot
of trouble and accidents !

Orbital-time  now  !  I remember
the  two  brothers  coming up in
the  completely  dark  tank with
headmounted  lights, kicking off
with  a lot of new material from
'Snivilisation' as well as a lot
of  golden  oldies  like Impact,
Remind  and Halcyon (as the last
track  !!)  Gosh  !  It's no use
trying to explain how good these
guys  are on stage.  I saw a lot
of   great   techno   on   stage
including  Cosmic Baby, Speedy J
and The Drum Club but Orbital is
the best I ever saw.  No miracle
that  their  live performance on
Glastonsbury  festival  (a  rock
festival  !)  was  voted as best
one !  Go out and see them !

Another  break to go outside and
get  fresh  air  which  was  the
reason  I  missed  a big part of
Autechre,   altough  one  of  my
favourites      too.       Great
intelligent  techno with complex
robotic  rythms.   After  them a
lot  of  people  left.   It  was
about  5am  and  the first light
was  shining throug the entrance
door  (uuurgh,  this  is  what I
hate about summer)

I  had high hope on Sun Electric
but  it  turned  out  they did a
'special   ambient  set'.   Most
people  however  were still full
of energy and wanted some action
because  the music was extremely
ambient.   Luckily the guys from
Sun   Electric  recognized  this
very  well  and  threw  off some
extremely  good  hardtrance  for
the  last  15  minutes  of their
gig.

The  last  artist  was Mixmaster
Morris  who did an excellent job
in      creating     a     spacy
end-of-the-party     atmosphere,
making  you  leave  with a smile
:-)

To  celebrate the night we drove
off  to  the  seaside (only a 30
minutes drive from Amsterdam) to
open  a  bottle  of champaign on
the beach and have a little swim
(ravers aren't what they used to
be :-)

All in all I give this event a 9
out  of  10, everything was very
well  organised,  except for the
chaos   at  the  entrance.   And
maybe  they should pay attention
to the fact that there is always
one  place  on  the  party  were
people can dance.  I really like
the  concept  of  Oscillate, but
people    go    out   to   move.
Oscillate  should offer the best
of both worlds !

{{Dominique Poncin-Brussel,Belgium}}