Sun and Bass is an annual drum and bass festival that is now into its sixth year, held in San Teodoro, Sardinia. It is less of a festival in the usual sense, and more of a series of party nights in a beautiful beached location. San Teodoro is a small little village that hosts a number of excellent clubs and beautiful beaches, which makes it perfect for such an event.
About 1,000 people attended this year, and it gets bigger each year. The festival lasts for a week, and each day there are a number of events; one or two events per day, and one club night with each club night having two areas/zones. The main nights this year were themed: Metalheadz Session, Hospital meets Spoonfed, A Bunch of Cuts meets Feline, Club Autonomic, and Serato Session. On either sides of these main events were also unthemed nights. (See the line-up here.)
Once I saw the line-up, I chose a number of main events I wanted to go to. These were (in no order of preference):
- Metalheadz Session
- Hospital meets Spoonfed
- A Bunch of Cuts meets Feline
- Club Autonomic
- Alix Perez and Spectrasoul on the beach
- Lynx & Kemo, DRS, Jenna G at Bal Harbour
- Instra:Mental b2b D-Bridge on the beach
Even though that is not every day of the festival, that is still some full on drum and bass dedication to party that many days in a row, especially as I know when I party there is a high chance I will be hugging a toilet bowl the next day. Also, I am old. My liver only functions at about 50% these days, or so it would seem.
So back to the start a bit more before I continue on about the festival itself. There are a number of things you need to do well in advance of deciding to go to Sun and Bass, particularly if you are enough of a nutter to come from the other side of the world for it.
- Get travel insurance. The promoters of Sun and Bass seem to leave a lot to the very last minute, as this year a line-up did not go out until about the week before, and it was not even sent to those on the mailing list or those who bought tickets online. Do not expect preparation for events such as PHAT where you know 4 months in advance who is playing. I say get travel insurance on the off-chance the gig doesn’t go ahead and you need to get your flights refunded, although hopefully this would never happen.
- Book your flights. Firstly, you have to get to the other side of the world. The festival is right at the end of peak summer season in Europe so to get better prices you will want to leave at the very end of August or early September. You will also want to make sure you have a couple of days to sort out your body clock as jet lag for me going to Europe lasts about 3 days. You have a couple of options: get a travel agent to book everything for you, or get them to do the major international flights and use cheaper domestic routes yourself. But careful – some as bastards such as Ryanair, and some airlines fly into an airport other than Olbia (which is the closest to San Teodoro). Because a lot of people will also be flying from London, you might want to consider flying from another city in order to get decent flights that get into Olbia, that won’t be full and arrive on the Saturday. I flew with Jet2 from Machester which was not too bad a price, got to Olbia, and got me there on the day I wanted. The issue you will find here that international flights will give you more baggage allowance than the domestic, so you will either have to pay excess, be stuffed, or be a good traveller and take no more than about 18kgs.
- Find somewhere to stay. As someone who can’t be bothered with such things as camping, I would recommend getting an apartment for the week, and ideally somewhere in the middle of Al Faro, La Cinta beach, Ambra Night, Ambra Day, and Ripping Club so you can stumble home in the early hours without having to do a massive mission walk (Ambra Night is about a 30 minutes walk from Ripping Club). These can range from really cheap to really expensive. Ours was on the expensive side, around €500, but you can definitely get cheaper ones than that. It is very important you book well in advance! Also as a note: the apartments are not hotels, so you will need to pay extra for linen and towels, so make sure you at least bring a beach towel (which you could always buy on the beach from on of the African merchants).
- Get to San Teodoro from the airport. There are buses but instead I hired a car for the week, to give me some freedom and be able to explore a bit more. I paid €35 per day for unlimited mileage. Renting a car was easy, as you pick it up from the airport and just drive straight to San Teodoro. Be prepared though, they drive on the right-hand side of the road and the street signs are confusing!
- Learn at least a bit of Italian. This is where I mostly failed. But at least I had a phrase book for those moments when I needed it. There are quite a few people in San Teodoro who don’t speak English.
- Take euros with you. There is only one cashpoint in San Teodoro that accept cirrus/maestro and it is hard to find. Couple this with not being able to use credit cards without chips at the clubs or credit cards at stores for purchases less than €10-20 and it can get very tricky.
Now for some advice once you start your Sun and Bass experience:
- Take toilet paper with you to the club. The clubs look nice in photos, but the first two or three nights there was no toilet paper at all in the girls loos. I told the bar staff and they said they couldn’t do anything about it. So unless you want to try and do the shake and get piss all in your panties, I recommending bringing a stash in your purse.
- Try to avoid the blue cocktails. Whatever is in them is lethal. It’s just not worth it, unless you have a penchant for vomiting.
- Put your dancing shoes on. You are definitely going to need them!
- Don’t miss the day events because you are still drunk from the night before. That is what I did, I should have sucked it up and just gone anyway.
- Try to see some of the island before you leave. Sardinia is beautiful. Go to other towns, go up the Esmeralda Coast (which I missed because I was cuddling a toilet bowl), just generally explore. It’s very pretty.
- Bring earplugs. This is your mother speaking.
So, my experience at Sun and Bass. Overall, it was great fun. It would have been more fun with a big crew from back home, because although I met people there it would have been nice to have some hard-out dnb buddies there to enjoy the experience with me. That said, I met some really lovely people there: a girl from Christchurch who I went to Redeyes with in London afterwards, a girl who grew up in the same town as me in New Zealand, another girl who went to school with my sister and knows me from the parties I had when I was a teenager, a wicked girl from Slovakia who took me out to dinner, a crazy German girl who likes to get drunk more than me who I spent a great morning on the beach with, and had some good chats and times with people like MC Lowqui who was on instruction to look after me (job succeeded), Jason A-Sides whom I’d met earlier in the year who was a great beach buddy. And overall, I got to have lots of random conversations about drum and bass with new people, and dance to the music I love in somewhere completely different, both of which are things I love doing.
Some of the highlights for me:
The Club Autonomic night – without a doubt this was for me the best event of the whole festival. Amazing vibes, great people, great music, lots of dancing.
Jenna G’s live vocal set at Bal Harbour with added bonus accidental strip show.
Fats being rushed in when Calibre dropped Drop It Down to sing along.
Randall at the Serato Session: I just couldn’t stop my feet from dancing, even though it was my 5th night on it! And I can’t finish this highlights list without a mention of specific DJs that I had gone there to see: Spectrasoul, Calibre, Commix, Instra:Mental, Marcus Intalex, Doc Scott, Klute, Lynx, and Alix Perez. They are the DJs I would want to see every time they came to New Zealand.
Some of my experience was marred somewhat by what I can only say is the sexist nature of drum and bass. 99% of the DJs and producers are men, it is largely men dancing with their shirts off (to other men, may I add, not gay at all), and they all seem to have some fucked up notion that if you are a girl and you are there, you are there to have sex with DJs. I think this needs to change. I know it is possible to be a girl and be in love with drum and bass, not only because I am one, but because I know girls who are just like me. I can only think now we need to band together to change the scene; enough is enough. Less sausage sizzles and sexism!
But in summary, Sun and Bass was an incredible experience. I definitely want to go back next year and catch up with my new foreign dnb buddies again. I know we’d have an even better time next year!
(For more photos and videos, see my set on Flickr here.)