'Diary of a doof - Outsider Festival, 2022' / Robbie Mason
Logbook entries from 3 days in the bush at a swamp doof. Robbie Mason archives Outsider Festival.
25-02-22, 3 PM, Lewisham, Sydney: A torrent of water charges down Hobbs Street. I’m watching a stampede of liquid white stallions consume the tarmac. The water on the footpath is already a few inches deep. It’s the heaviest rain all day. Do Lauren and I even go? What if there’s flooding in Yengo National Park? What if we get trapped somehow, mired in a bubble of unreality and timelessness, a never-ending doof? Well fuck we hired this camper van for the whole weekend…
My mind lurches and rolls like refuse caught in the rushing torrent before my eyes. I think of that Vice documentary about a wook festival in Panama right at the beginning of the COVID pandemic. It coincided with a flight ban across the nation. Many stranded punters had to wait over a month before they could leave, all while camping on a beach like modern-day Robinson Crusoes. I fetch an umbrella.
25-02-22, 7.15 PM, Putty: The entrance is already a quagmire. Some wooden boards hint at a safe path. The guy at the gate (Ethan?) shouts intermittently into the radio on his belt while he instructs us to reverse and “gun it” through the sludge. I reverse back, readjust my seat belt. Lauren squeezes my hand. Somehow the land-yacht-camper-van makes it through. The field is already a chessboard of mud and firmer ground.
We pitch our marquee where we get bogged.
Our campsite. Image courtesy: Lauren Declase.
25-02-22, 8.15 PM: We reach the dancefloor just in time for Corin’s set (phew) – marquee, tarp, camping chairs and fairy lights all set up. Hard techno and deconstructed club pummel the bush. Mud is already rising up on the dancefloor. The rain protection is distressingly small and the cover sags where water pools.
Towards the end of Corin’s set, PTwiggs jumps on. They go back to back and the energy seems to whip them into a frenzy. White teeth behind the decks almost seem to glint amid the smoke. We hear the first gabber and hardcore since arriving. Lauren wants to hakk but it’s barely possible in the sticky sludge. I know she’d show up any other dancer trying to hakk on a more solid surface (circa 2012-2016 Masif outings = boss level training).
26-02-22, 4.00 AM: Doof is now a swamp rave mud bath.
Rain has failed to dampen spirits.
DJ BEVERLY HILL$ is on. Founder of recently-established Sydney/Eora labels Dysphoria Records and 3cb, prolific producer and high BPM addict. I imagine these sounds blaring from a subwoofer and speakers in the boot of a 2005 Subaru WRX with gold rims. Hard tek with attitude. (Sped-up ghetto tech? Euro doof Freetekno?) If the music were a person right now, they’d probably splash you in beer and then tell you to lighten up while offering you a cig that’s rolled fat at one end like a joint. The music is all back-slapping and playful wrestling rather than handshakes and hi-fives.
People look like glassy-eyed, smooth-skinned figurines in a Y2K-themed doll doof, as if Barbie and Ken turned grungy in their fashion taste and dropped acid every weekend. Body movements are static as if we’re made of plastic, but it’s really just the mud preventing us from fully embracing the music. It’s a curious combination of Sydney’s inner-west queer-left warehouse party scene, surfer dudes, blonde-haired girls in sparkly cowboy hats and hard dance fiends. It’s not a wook convention.
The crowd is smaller than I expected. There are not quite enough punters for people to feel fully comfortable breaking out of their preordained doll’s house scenes – at least not yet anyway.
I turn to Lauren. “I came here expecting to be swept off my feet, to meet a whole bunch of new people.”
“Give it time”, she replies.
Hazy view of the dancefloor. Image courtesy: Buzz Speaker Hire.
26-02-22, 12:30: I start making breakfast over a gas stove. A brekkie burger, baked beans, a fruit bowl and a gin and tonic. We went all out at Coles. We’ve done well for rocking up to a doof with 24 hours notice.
Curtis (DJ BEVERLY HILL$) comes up for a chat. He divulges that he is disappointed in his set. Some technical issues at the beginning threw him off. By the end of his live set he was straight up improvising, which doesn’t sound half bad to me. I hope he has the recording.
26-02-22, 14:00: I’m somehow still hungry. I take my Nike Shox for a test run and stroll over the food truck. 18 bucks for a wagyu beef burger, fries and a soft drink and it tastes fantastic too. It’s a fraction of the price of those overpriced-Maccas-imitation burgers that inner-west yuppies froth (yep, Mary’s burgers) and just as good.
The music is back. I have a quick sus. Ivy is playing a chill, almost ambient set.
When I get back to the van, I put my boots back on.
The food truck at Outsider Festival. Image courtesy: Charlie Rodger.
26-02-22, 4.00 PM: Posture behind the decks. There’s a distinctive queer flavour to the set. Hi NRG, hard house, techno and breakbeat. I’m transported to an Oxford Street club in the late 00s. Booty shaking stuff.
I can see the crowd better now. The crowd seems diverse in terms of the subcultures represented but the one unifying factor I notice – and a gentle critique echoed elsewhere – is the attendees’ overall whiteness (alas, what doof isn’t like this though?).
That said, the involvement of Al Gharib behind-the-scenes has added to what is a pleasingly diverse line-up.
Time to crack the sparkling. Image courtesy: Lauren Declase.
26-02-22, 6.30 PM: Well and truly on the psychs train now and loving being out in the bush with this sweet sweet air. It seems like everyone is getting festive.
Some strangers give me a full ten seconds before I’m locked into hour long cap chats. I ain’t complaining.
26-02-22, 7.30 PM: Jay comes up to me and tells me that some of the Headnoiz organisers are DJing vinyl right now and I’m impressed. Fango b2b DJ Zoik.
DJ Zoik spinning vinyl. Image courtesy; Charlie Rodger.
26-02-22, 10.00 PM: Smoke billows in opaque sheets like a line of pirate-doof flags flapping in a maelstrom of sound waves. On the outskirts of my kaleidoscope vision, green, red and purple light swirl and melt into each other like neon clouds. Silhouettes flail – only arms though. My feet sink dangerously deep into the bog which feels like super glue.
DJ BIG GUNS is putting the Void sound system to extreme use, weaving between techno, Goa trance, psy and hard trance. Beautiful chaos.
27-02-22, 4.00 AM: Omformer of the Ute crew – Norwegian forest rave aficionados – are churning out techno and hard trance, practically uprooting eucalypts. In my mind I picture modified V8 HSV Maloos on the edges of the dancefloor with flames spitting from their exhausts (we’re all cavemen dancing around a campfire to bongo drums ok). I’m inside a doof euphoria chamber.
Image courtesy: Buzz Speaker Hire.
On the links between the Ute crew and Headnoiz, organiser Zach Havard (DJ Zoik) explains: “[Fellow Headnoiz organisers] Ethan and Conor saw them play at Suale, Berghain a few years back, maybe 2018, and they actually thought that Ethan was Mallgrab! Not the only time that’s happened to him, but they chatted a bit outside after their set and that’s when we first started listening to and became fans of their music. Then one of the guys messaged me on Instagram about six months ago and said they were keen to come down, I think they may have found our party first as we use the same graphic designer as them for some work… We teed up a few Zoom meetings and Insta chats then before we knew it we had a little tour organised.”
27-02-22, 5.00 AM: The showers have hot water!? Blessed. Cleansed.
The showers! Image courtesy: Buzz Speaker Hire.
27-02-22, 9.15 AM: The music is still going, even though the set list indicates it should have finished hours ago. Wild. Having barely slept – I managed two hours – I meander over to the dancefloor but the music stops as soon as I arrive. People mill, unsure how to respond to the sudden silence smothering the camp. They give me the down low. DJ BEVERLY HILL$ and DJ BIG GUNS and a punter, alias: Neurodancer, took over the decks after Accelerationism, but the organisers had to kick them off to preserve fuel for the genny.
There’s an itch for something more, an itch to keep the party going – a social craving perhaps not fully satisfied.
DJ BEVERLY HILL$. Image courtesy: Charlie Rodger.
Zach describes Outsider Festival as a “learning experience”. He references “loads of little things we never thought of, like getting 14 tonnes or something of gravel dropped off on Saturday morning to help get cars unbogged. With the venue being so remote things like petrol for generators was a 45 minute drive each way… I think there are a lot of things we can apply to make Outsider 2023 a step better.”
27-02-22, 3.30 PM: First glimpses of the white-haired owner of the property, who comes through in gum boots with some friends (family?), seemingly unfazed at the debris from the last two days. Moments later he is towing out bogged vehicles including my own. “Don’t worry if you get it bogged again mate, just give me a shout. I ain’t going anywhere”, he says – remarkably cheerfully for a man’s whose property has just been turned into a urine-infested, nang-polluted mud flat.
He’s an absolute champion.
Lone soldier. Image courtesy: Buzz Speaker Hire.
“It was Google Earth that helped us find Cliff… [He] pretty much gave us free reign on the property. There was a lot of cold calling and a heap of unanswered emails but we eventually got the space and I think it was perfect”, Zach explains. “We actually had another venue arranged before this one – in Wisemans Ferry but the owner there was pretty staunch on things like sound levels and running times.”
27-02-22, 5 PM: Punters loll in camping chairs, half delirious. The Ute boys are back behind the decks. The pace is a bit slower this time. A couple of people dance but the dancefloor is mostly deserted. The majority of people have packed up and left now. Again, I can’t help but feel that the doof needs greater attendance. The intense rain and COVID-prompted postponements mean that it’s not necessarily the organisers’ fault. The quality of music certainly deserves a bigger audience. It’s been hectic all weekend. I really couldn’t have asked for a better line-up.
I stay and drink and dance. But responsibilities in Sydney tap me on the shoulder and whisper in my ears.
After over two years of cancelled and postponed doofs – bushfires then COVID – I’m torn in half, my heart pulled in two directions.
The doof has had the hallmarks of a crew’s first doof. The general store was, well, pretty non-existent. The rain was a bit of a bummer and probably turned a few people away at the last moment. The mud issue was never really fixed. I hear tales of artists struggling to reach the doof amid organisational chaos. But, right now, none of that really matters. I don’t want to leave. And it’s clear a heck of a lot of work has gone into the doof.
The Headnoiz crew have done well considering the obstacles they have faced. Bravo.
The property in Putty. Image courtesy: Robbie Mason.
27-02-22, 8.30 PM: Pulled over on the side of Putty Road to take a leak and we’re bogged again. I have no mobile reception but thank fuck Lauren does. I put the hazards on.
Lauren is running in circles on the phone. The issue is that my NRMA account is linked to my own specific vehicle (which is in a garage having the air con fixed). We’re in a hired camper van and it’s a bureaucratic nightmare.
I try to hail the occasional vehicle that passes. No luck.
27-02-22, 9 PM: A man in tradie high-vis and an akoubra pulls up next to us and asks us if we need help. A God send. A bloody highway angel. YES. Yes we do.
He drives off to fetch his ute and a chain – he lives down the road. Fifteen minutes later he is yanking us out of our self-induced ditch. I want to offer him a beer but we finished our last one long ago.
Yep, bogged twice during our trip, but it was all worth it. Take me back to Putty. Please. I want to do it all again.
Words by Robbie Mason (@robbiemasonlhs).
Thumbnail image courtesy: Buzz Speaker Hire.
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