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-- Review: Minitek Festival - read more than the first post
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| Originally posted by RobotHouse i notice people noticing booth whores when i go to the club. thats how fucking ironic i am, my scene awareness is like a 6th sense i can smell people having a good time from across the dance floor and i glare at them menacingly until i am certain theyve shivered at least once in shame. |
Jay, remember when you used to hate techno?
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| Originally posted by devnull i know u guys have TO blood lol! u guys are definitely not NYC born! |
sounds like they recorded the sets 
http://dailysession.com/category/radio-shows/
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| Originally posted by Skipper Jay, remember when you used to hate techno? |
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| Originally posted by devnull sounds like they recorded the sets http://dailysession.com/category/radio-shows/ |
Thanks for all the reviews - good to know.
BTW, because I do value the reviews of TOTAs, did anyone catch Ambivalent? I've been a huge fan of his productions for years now but have never caught him live.
Richie was out here last week and it was good but it wasn't the brilliance of the Richie as it was last time at DEMF '06.
Minimoo's apology
apologies owed�
September 16th, 2008 by Jenny
dear all,
as we�ve expected, there are many enraged, disappointed and upset people out there that gave minitek�s first edition their support.
obviously we want to apologize for all the mishaps that have taken place over the weekend and we know well that we can offer little to make up for the bad experiences. we can�t blame you for directing all your anger towards us, as we are the official representatives of the festival, however, to save at least a little bit of face, we would like to set a few things clear.
1) unlike the comments that have been posted, we DID NOT book a night venue that wouldn�t hold the amount of people we expected. instead we worked with a venue that had misrepresented their certificate of occupancy (the official document that restricts the amount of people the venue can legally hold). there was no reason to believe that the 38.000sf venue couldn�t hold 2500 people at the very least. once the police showed up, the manager of the venue was forced to show the �real� certificate of occupancy and as it turned out, the venue didn�t even have one! the one that was eventually shown to the police was from 1963 and claimed an occupancy of only 208 people, but it was long void as the venue had changed their use a few times since the permit was issued more than 40 years ago.
2) when we moved to rebel that same night, they had clear instructions to let in everyone with a wristband for free. most people i spoke to didn�t have an issue, but we did read in some posts that people had to pay again, which we deeply regret. at least we were able to salvage paul ritch�s, paco osuna�s, elon�s, memek�s and marco carola�s set, and we hope that we receive at least a little bit of credit for having been able to move to a backup venue within 10 minutes of the news that we were going to get shut down at 3:30am, most festivals would have just ended there.
3) minitek night was supposed to take place at the penn plaza both nights. the police had notified us that they would accept a maximum of 75 people in the space the second night, so we were obviously forced to work on a contingency plan. as you can imagine, there are hardly any venues in new york city that are large enough to hold several thousand people and second, available on a saturday night. we had to resort to splitting the night into two in order to make sure we could hold as many people as possible and honour the performances of the artists.
4) as for announcing the night venue change on saturday night, we had posted a sign outside the penn plaza but in a deliberate attempt to sabotage the festival, the sign was removed, possibly by someone affiliated with friday�s venue. rumour had it that webster hall was saturday night�s venue but it was in fact studio b and club europa, not webster hall.
4) regarding the opening of the second stage on saturday in coney island, it was a delay on the side of the sound production company, and as much as we pressured them, they weren�t able to open the stage until 7pm.
5) we had requested (and received a verbal ok) for a sound permit until midnight on the saturday and one until 11pm on the sunday. on saturday afternoon, however, we were informed by the authorities that the permit was only until 10pm for the saturday, so we had to cut the set times short. the notice for sunday came on sunday.
6) the RFID wristbands didn�t work out because they required internet access in order to be charged and loaded. we had ordered (and paid) internet connection at the penn plaza over 4 weeks ago and for the system to work, we would have needed 28 separate IP addresses, one for each reader. we eventually received only 5 IP addresses (without prior notice), and throughout the night, the internet dropped entirely, rendering the whole system useless. we will reimburse money loaded onto the wristbands at the beginning of the night, please get in touch with us on [email protected][/email] and keep the wristbands.
as for the organisation on our end, we admit that there were many mistakes and misjudgements made. had it been only for those though, we would have still been able to pull off the event without major glitches, albeit not as planned but certainly far from the disasters that eventually happened. we take the blame for those but we do hope that you understand that most chaos was caused by the night venue�s misrepresentation, which - straightout- f***ed us over, collected ten thousands of dollars from us and left us stranded. you can imagine the value lost from 1500 people that couldn�t enter that night, those who couldn�t enter the next night, let alone the big hit on our reputation.
all in all, as much as many of you had a terrible experience, you can�t even possibly imagine how we feel about the festival. apart from all personal money invested and lost, we also dedicated months and months of our time and all our energy and passion to making something happen that new york had never seen before. we had a vision and seeing the aftermath of everything almost kills our spirit.
we obviously understand that those of you who didn�t make it in on friday or saturday night are requesting refunds. but we also know that the more people are requesting refunds, the less likely it will be that we�ll be able to do minitek again in 2009, having learned from our experiences this year. we would really love to receive a second chance, to prove that we can in fact pull it off. refund policies are going to be published on wednesday.
a million things went wrong this year but the turnout proves that at least the idea of minitek wasn�t totally crazy and unless we�re fully deluded we did see and spoke to thousands of happy faces over the weekend, dancing, enjoying the music and thanking us for making minitek happen in the first place. rich�s and francois k�s closing sets surely were epic. and while the angry festival-goers are voicing their opinions on blogs and message boards, the satisfied attendees are silent.
so, a big apology to all of you who felt mistreated this weekend, we certainly had no intentions of delivering less than we promised. and a big �thank you� to those who still support us and who believe that with great lessons learned, we�ll be able to give new york the festival it deserves next year!
love,
jenny, daniele & the whole minitek team
please feel free to send us evil emails to [email][email protected] and in case there are people out there who would like to drop us a line of support, please do so. in times like today, a few kind words surely go a long way�
Source: http://minitekfestival.com/blog/?p=149
Minitek Festival NYC Sets September 13-14th 2008
http://www.tranceaddict.com/forums/...14&forumid=6&s=
Nice, glad to see that the hawtin got snagged up - haven't seen a new set of his online posted in ages.
Good response from the organizers. They definitely had their hands full.
I don't buy half of it.
Audion had the best set all weekend - he was absolutely bonkers.
Hawtin's set was a huge MEH - wtf did he turn the volume down 30 min before his set ended?
-I was VERY disappointed with the first night as I wanted to see Paco and Carola more than any other DJ there and was denied entry
-Cab ride to studio b/europa was fucked!!
other than that im not gonna even bother writing a review as pretty much most has been covered by everyone else
Jay it was really nice to meet you finally and you're a great guy to have around! Thanks for being the only patient and helping person in that cab ride - who knows where we would've ended up without you to help. Can't wait for the next time!
Kelly - thanks for helping out with all my pre-planning you're really helpful and fun to party with!
That's all.
my review.... no time to edit... bare with me
Arrive at JFK around 10 am > Hotel around 12:30. After settling into the hotel, we all decided to head into Manhattan to check it out. It started raining almost right away and rained most of the night. This rain caused the Yankees game to get rained out, which I was really pissed about. We went to the night venue for around midnight�. The lineup was huge. After about 2 hours of waiting I tried texting all my friends to tell them not to bother coming, I figured the wait would be to long for them. I went back to the hotel after walking around Manhattan a bit with my friends. After finally arriving at the Hotel I received a message from Shelley saying it was moved to a club called Rebel. I decided I wouldn�t make it back to the club in time to enjoy any music.
Saturday started really slow�. We hung out and got really messy before deciding to made it down to the day venue for around 1 pm. I was kind of worried when we arrived because there wasn�t much sound coming from the venue. It took over an hour to get in�. but it being the first day I expected the wait. After getting into the venue I noticed only one stage was completely setup and the monitors were the only ones working. A lot of people were just sitting around on the glass and under the tent. Probably about a half hour after getting there the sound guy finally turned on the sound. This made the 100 or so people go crazy. For the next few hours the music was rocking. As the day went on the music progressively turned up and I realized the sound was really well done at the day venue. Finally they setup the other stage, I went over to listen. This stage had even better sound then the other�.. a bit bassy at time, but over all I was impressed. Audiofly and M.A.N.D.Y vs Tiefschwarz both had me by the balls, until they shut it down at 10 pm. We all went back to the hotel to party it up before hitting the new night venue Studio B. After arriving the hour drive with the drunk cabby from hell, we finally got into the night venue. We got into the sketchy, sweaty night venue. First thing I did is ran over to get a bottle of water�. No water left. Let�s just say that fucked up my whole night�. I wasn�t feeling to good because I was dehydrated. I heard a bit of Magda then decided I couldn�t handle the heat any longer.
We went back to the hotel�. I pasted out shortly after.
Sunday morning I awoke feeling like crap and not being able to sleep much more. We decided to get a case of beer and waste our day getting drunk. The girls decided to take off to Manhattan to do a bit of shopping. At about 3pm we all got our asses in gear to start heading down to Coney Island. When we got there Butane was playing, he was setting the mood quickly. I found out it was closing at 10pm, so I test messaged as many people as I could to rush down there.
At Ten PM we left, just as Richie finished his set. We ended up going to a sick zone like afterhours bar, which had a lot of good dj�s playing all techno/minimal. The club was called Supreme Trading or something. I am glad I got to experience such a club in NYC.
Fav sets:
Audiofly, Davide Squillace, M.A.N.D.Y vs Tiefschwarz, Audion and the first hour of Richie�s set.
Things I liked about minitek:
-sound systems at day venue
-the amount of Toronto people who came
-seeing a few dj�s I have never been able to catch
-sketch hotel (Quality Inn in Brooklyn)
-Meeting YankeeBaby and Shelley�s Bobby lol
Things I disliked about minitek:
-Friday night getting fucked up by the Fire Marshall
-The Saturday night venue being so hot and running out of water.
-The long as train ride to Coney Island.
Worst parts:
I feel bad for everyone who decided to skip a lot of the day time parties�. That was the only part that made this trip worth going for.
Thanks to all the TA�s for making me feel so comfortable in NYC.
more details from the minitek crew:
Resident Advisor: Minitek
After a few days of silence, the organizers of last weekend's Minitek festival have posted a letter on their website explaining many of the issues that led to the event's problems.
As many have already heard, Friday's events were shut down well before the 8 AM advertised closing time, due to Penn Plaza Pavilion reaching its official capacity. As the organizers tell it, however, the venue "misrepresented their certificate of occupancy." When asked by RA, in an interview conducted this evening, what the certificate of occupancy said, festival organizer Jenny Tan declined specifics, stating that it was it "definitely enough to hold everyone who bought weekend tickets at the very least."
While the organizers covered many of the issues with the festival's Friday night in their letter, we talked further to Tan to get the lowdown on what happened over the course of the weekend and whether there will be a Minitek in 2009.
From all reports that I heard, no one was in charge on Saturday at the day venue at 10:00 AM, no one was there. What happened?
Saturday morning, the sound was delayed. It was the same company that took care of Friday night, they took care of the whole festival. They were late, but as soon as they got in, they fixed the first stage.
Why hadn't the sound been fixed the day before?
The sound was set up. We had been working with the sound company for a year-and-a-half, and they had always done an excellent job. They were totally overwhelmed with the scope of the festival, though, even with having dealt with festival sound before. We believed them when they said they would be able to handle a festival of that scope�.We had ordered them to come on Monday morning to set up the sound, but they eventually showed up on Thursday morning. We had obviously spoken to them about this, and told them that we could hire another company to do the day sound and that they could handle the night, but they said it would be fine. They were obviously too busy with the night venue. It was actually the Mint Stage that was set up more than the Purple Stage, even though it was eventually the Mint Stage that didn't happen until very late.
They fixed the Purple Stage first, but it took a long time because there were a lot of live sets, but they concentrated solely on that stage, even though we told them that they had to get the other working as well. They wanted to make the Purple Stage sound perfect. We tried to put some pressure on them to get the Mint Stage set to go, but they were not able to comply.
They just didn't have enough people to get it together?
We haven't spoken to the sound guys to find out exactly what went wrong in setting the stage up, but from what I could gather they didn't have enough people�or enough qualified people�to be able to work on both stages simultaneously.
It certainly doesn't seem like any work was being done at all on the Mint Stage.
No, but that was the terrible thing. The only thing that was missing was about 20 minutes of work [from the sound people]. The speakers were standing, the sound tests had already been done. The only thing was that some of the equipment wasn't there yet. Some of the turntables weren't there. The Traktor Scratch wasn't installed, the mixer wasn't plugged in. That was why it was so frustrating, because you could see that the stage would be ready to go with 30 minutes of work after the equipment was set up.
You were finally able to confirm that Studio B was the night venue late in the evening, around 7:00 PM. Why did it take so long?
Studio B hadn't been open for most of the summer, so it wasn't an operational club we could just move to. We wanted to work out what kind of staff was going to be there, the club itself had to sort out the staff, we also needed to make sure that it was going to be operational sound-wise. We talked to a few different venues, but Studio B made the best sense for us because we could also use Caf� Europa to honor all of the artist's performances between the two venues. We wanted to have that second space close by so that if people wanted to see one act, they could walk down the street easily.
Was there an announcement as to who was playing where?
Yes. At the end of the festival, we announced both parties on both stages and we also had a note at Penn Plaza guiding people to Studio B, but that was removed.
But if I wanted to see Pan-Pot, for instance, would I have known whether they were playing at Studio B or Caf� Europa? Or was that up to festivalgoers to try to find out by asking around?
Yeah. The lack of communication is something that we have to take full blame for. The day venue was supposed to have internet access, which didn't end up working. We paid for it, we had the internet installed on Thursday or Friday, but we were so focused on the night venue that we couldn't go test-drive it beforehand. So that stalled us in getting a message across.
The other thing was that Saturday's event during the day was also an organizational nightmare. We were relying on a certain amount of promised volunteers and then about 25 of them didn't show up. As opposed to being able to run the event, I was trying to extinguish fires right and left.
Why did the day venue end earlier than advertised?
We had requested a sound permit until midnight on Saturday and 11 PM on Sunday, and we were assured that it would be fine, but they don't issue permits until the day of the event�as far as I was told�so when we received the notice that we weren't going to go on until 12, we moved the sets knowing that we couldn't go on that long.
I think the biggest problem with the festival was the lack of communication to everyone else. Because we were so concerned with salvaging with what there was to salvage, we completely failed in communicating that to the crowd. We take full blame for that. We had the computers with us to make announcements if something was to happen, but then the internet wasn't working.
How many people were working on the festival?
Before the festival began, it was six. And, yes, we were totally under-staffed. There is no doubt about that. During the festival it was maybe fifteen or so.
Will there be another Minitek?
Yes, absolutely. It would be a shame that if everything we learned from this first bad experience we didn't use next year. I understand that a lot of people are extremely disappointed with us and mad at us. Going over the posts on message boards and websites, we can see that people put a lot of trust in us and a lot of goodwill into the event. A lot of people traveled from faraway places to come and enjoy the festival. And it breaks our hearts to see that we weren't able to give people what they were promised. And I truly mean that.
We lacked the experience. At the end of the day, you can't really know what it's going to come down to at a festival unless you've done one. Yes, we could have worked with people who have already done large events, but we wanted to do it on our own and we wanted to figure out what it is, what it takes to make this happen. I hope that people can give us credit for simply doing it at all. If it hadn't been for us, an electronic music festival wouldn't have happened in New York.
We definitely learned from all of the mistakes that we made this year. Everytime we did a Minimoo party, we would learn something and be able to apply it to next month's party. In this case, we have one year to prepare, and we won't be able to make up for it within a year. It will only be next year that we show that we can handle an event as large as that.
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| Originally posted by devnull On the postive, I am glad to have met Kelly and shelly. You guys were the friendliest New Yorkers out there |
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| Originally posted by PurpleHaze Kelly - thanks for helping out with all my pre-planning you're really helpful and fun to party with! |
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| Originally posted by london_ta Things I liked about minitek: -sound systems at day venue -the amount of Toronto people who came -seeing a few dj�s I have never been able to catch -sketch hotel (Quality Inn in Brooklyn) -Meeting YankeeBaby and Shelley�s Bobby lol |
It was hella fun chillin with some new cancucks, and thanks for making my first minimal experience so enjoyable lol it was one hell of a weekend and I enjoyed it despite the fuckups. (maybe thats because I didnt pay a shitload to come from outta town....??) 
you guys are always welcome here, I would love if you came down and tried out the city again. This place a has a lot going on and is generally worth the trip (ask people whom have been here before)
nice response or not i will not be wasting my cash on this next year.
bookings or not, mutek kills it, sets it on fire and pisses it out.
Pierce's last song and Audion's first song
http://www.new.facebook.com/video/v...561879662&saved
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