Did you hear about last years Wilsonic? No? Well, I bet youll hear about the next one. Michal Hvorecký and Tibor Holota, Wilsonics supremos, brought in really interesting artists this year. Wilsonic 2001 took place in Atlon, a former shopping centre right in the town centre. Entering the club, I thought what a beautiful interior but as time went on some hitches in organisation became apparent. The chaos with the locations of the cloakrooms was unpleasant at the beginning and the classic disease of large scale events appeared: a problem with toilet capacity. The last minus was a lack of ventilation and the fact that all the windows had to remain closed because of the people living (sleeping) in the surrounding buildings.

Without any announcement, Daniel Baláž aka DJ Luculus, the loved and damned ex Radio Ragtime DJ, appeared on stage and launched the night with a gorgeous experimental, mostly downtempo set. Ive never seen him performing live except for long gone Sleepy Motion gig in 1993 as a drummer, but this time he had it right. Yeah, and the brief video projection with Marie Curie and trademarks of old Czechoslovakian electrical appliances fitted perfectly well.

Continuing with first time ever performance by Tea Peak, Bratislava based duo, introducing themselves with long, primitive ambient intro, which was quite nice, but later it seemed like the boys, Josef Vlk and Martin Turčan, left some of their instruments at home….on the piano. The crowd, until now just sitting and chilling around, finally hit it off with Jake Mandell as he began his set in truly party mode. Hailing from Minneapolis, producing his minimal house on a software designed by himself, with a help of just one notebook and small mix, forced people to get up and start dancing. Its 23.30 and London deconstruction freak Max Tundra (Warp, Domino) in person is ready to amuse us with his 30 minutes long (short?) live act. Hes not playing such trashed lo-fi tunes like on his album Some Best Friend You Turned Out To Be…., actually hes taking my breath away. Archaic sounds are contrasting with super intense hi-fi beats and then he adds guitars, horns and trumpets to bring the noise to some huge jazzy cacophony. When Tundra turns on the mike and starts his half sung, half spoken waterfall of words into the sounds he plays, Im quite fascinated. Next up were Crane A.K., the stars of Berlin minimal house label Force tracks. Finally there are no breaks and no scratches, just a little boring house. People are in the mood and theyre going to get much more than this. Time for the headliners… Gus Gus DJs Herb Legowitz and Alfred More, prepared to give the excited crowd a serious three and a half hours long lesson of how deep- and tech-house should sound like. MC Lola B. She joined the guys in the middle of powerful whirlwind of nordic sunshine energy house beats and pumped the atmosphere higher. Maybe it shouldnt be so long, because in a second half they lost the vibe from the beginning. No luck for those who expected them to play poppy hits. They must have enjoyed that gig because Tibor & Toky, waiting for their closing house set, evidently couldnt get them off the stage. That was a great, dark, bass-full house set. And at last, some turntables in action… until six oclock, then an afterparty in U-club. Congratulations to you, guys, mission successfully completed, looking forward to 2002…

MAREK BABUŠIAK