Sep 23, 2006

Harvest Festival

Last weekend, an hour and a half east of Toronto, Harvest Festival went going down. If you're not an electronic music freak you may wanna move on, but if you are there's nowhere else you should've been last Saturday night. The event has been growing every year - over 1000 people attend each year - somehow though, when festival founder Justin Martin (alienINFLUX) lights his proud 30-foot bonfire, everyone is brought together - hippy love all around. Then things get a bit crazy. Take a look a one of the short Harvest films on theigloo, my fav is 2001.
Throughout the night you can take your pick of one of three unique "stages": a glowing yellow pyramid, a barn with sparkling stars or a giant tent space, all set up on a glorious piece of rural Ontario farmland called Wholearth. If you're in the right spot at the right time you may even see some of the animals roaming about.
Though I'm an electro or tech-house girl I usually find little of it at Harvest Festival; Ali Black may be the only DJ to satisfy that craving. Thankfully, there are other options I can get into too - full-on techno to keep me moving all night and downtempo, dub and broken beats to carry me through to the morning. I've seen some brilliant acts at Harvest. A couple years ago the DJ duo the Dukes played an amazing set dressed up as Kiss and in the chill out room there was a great pairing of flute and digeridoo.
In the morning it's amazing to wake up with hundreds of others to on a beautiful and sunny autumn day., then join the crowd at nearby Healey Falls - the perfect place to get refreshed before heading back to civilization.