---
title: "Wait, what just happened?"
authors: ["nikomas.md"]
abstract: "A look at four awesome things that happened"

---


# Unreleased Love Songs  
Live Performance  
ᴘᴀɴᴀɢɪᴏᴛɪꜱ ᴍɪɴᴀ  
at DriveDrive (TESTDRIVE), Nicosia, 25 MAY 18  

Recently, Lover boy ᴘᴀɴ treated DriveDrive to a live performance called “unreleased love songs”, and it was a really fun spin on romantic music. It’s hard to describe, but ᴘᴀɴ is such a natural performer onstage that it is hard to tell if he is putting in loads of effort, or none at all. He just potters about the room, making the audience follow him around, bringing attention to different parts of the space, while he drifts from melancholic timbres to straight up hardware techno.

ᴘᴀɴ plays with the traditional model of “a singer on stage singing about love”, inverting and spinning the paradigm in interest- ing ways. The opening music was pure chaos, never holding still for a second; yet is was a far more detailed and deconstructed representation of “love” than i have ever found classical forms to be, as it was embracing of a certain existential cynicism.

Considering how low-energy his stage-presence is, its sometimes easy to forget how technically talented he is. At one point, he simply sat down, picked up a small sampler unit, and started to fuck about with it, creating some really energetic and playful sounds, in a way that felt very purposeful whilst at the same time experimental.


# Kataklysm  
Beach Party  
ᴀʀɪꜱᴛᴏᴅᴇᴍᴏꜱ  
at Mazotos Beach, Nicosia, 27 MAY 18  

Kataklysm was simple, but it reflected something profound about the culture of music altogether. When everything else is said and done, and there is nothing left to do, what happens? Glancing back through human history, the answer to that question is always to dance, to party, to simply be alive and to celebrate it by flooding the senses with stimulation and moving every muscle and joint in the body in every direction it can. To dance the night away is a very powerful expression of liberation and freedom, as it is fundamentally pointless out- side of the perspective of human experience. ᴀʀɪꜱᴛᴏᴅᴇᴍᴏꜱ set up some speakers at Mazotos beach, by a large abandonned house, facing out towards the sea and sky, and played until only the mist over the water was visible, luminescent from the moon behind it. As you stare out to see, with the music coming over your shoulders, it even feels as though the music, and the dancing, is being performed for some larger audience, either the gods, or aliens; in a way i can’t put to words, to rave by the sea is to display the most pure form of human expression. “We are here, we are alive, just look at us move”; isn’t it amazing?

# Low Society V  

Low Society  
at Mazotos Beach, Nicosia  
2 JUNE 18  

Low Society number 5. It was a good party. The place was beautiful; walking through the palm trees to the entrance was like a dream. There were two stages set up, one hidden in the trees, one by the beach, both very inspired locations. Yet, when I move away from my position as a friend, to a more academic position, I have to admit one thing; something didn’t quite click within the trees. Once the party had moved over to the beach, it was a different story, it was perfect there. I was really enjoying the whole situation, the crowd was a mix between so many ‘scenes’, but people just started to leave at 5am, and by 6am the dancefloor had really thinned out; i didn’t really understand what happened. Something about the combination of the music at that hour, with the crowd and the setting didn’t quite click. I guessed there was some kind of executive decision made to move to the beach stage early, as Janis opened at about 7am and wow, it is great to have him back. Flowing, and flowing, rolling, and rolling. The stage was beautiful, the minimal but simultaneously infinite aesthetic was stunning, and the remaining crowd were as warm as the sun coming up. This time it clicked. The setting and the music aligned. The music and the crowd aligned, too. Those hours were golden, and exactly the kind of standard that Cypriot raves and parties should be aiming for; a party that really utilizes the beauty of Cyprus, and the talent of it’s finest DJs.


# C'est Demon 

C’est Demon  
at DriveDrive (TESTDRIVE), Nicosia  
9 JUNE 18  


There was something a bit surreal about C’est Demon. This was the third event by the crew, and was hosted downtown, in the newly opened art’s space DriveDrive, in the basement; a really nice basement at that. The walls are gritty and pale, covered in imperfections, and they help to lend an airy looseness to the acoustics of the room. It sounded like a warehouse down there, kind of boomy but this space is surrounded by houses so you can’t be so wildly liberal with the sub. Perhaps it was because DriveDrive is known for being an exhibition space, but for the early hours of the event, it seemed as though we were in a live conceptual art exhibition, and what was on display was a recreation of a Chicago warehouse rave. The music was great, actually, but there seemed to be a small disconnection between the audience and the event; it wasn’t really a Techno rave, and it wasn’t really being framed as one either. So despite the fact that the selections were reeeally good, with some playful mixing, people hadn’t come ready to really interact with the sound in the way that the sound was built for. If this music was being played in the same space, but you moved the space out of downtown and let the music roll till 10am it would have been phenomenal, because the tracks were amazing and the place was very aesthetic. At one point, ᴊᴏʀᴀʟꜱᴋʏ let off a roaring track which was so full of detail and very dominant, and the room was full of the kind of energy that would make a rave explode, but people weren’t really “there” or in that mode.
This is fine though, everyone looked like they were having fun; a dance party in an arts space that closes at 3am wont get the dealers out, but it was really cool, down-to-earth gathering at a nice spot with good DJs. The match between the aesthetic of the room and the sound was very complimentary, and the acoustics being a little loose played into that too, making a nice sensory experience.
