Time keep slipping – for relaxing times, make it Making Time time

Making Love with Lauren, Dave P, JG Wilkes (Optimo), Andrew Ferguson and Keith McIvor (Optimo)

„(Keep slipping
Time keep slipping)“
(…)
„Timetables keep turning – like tinseltown
You’ve got the both ends burning – to the boogie down
(Time-time keeps slipping)
They play for time
And work for spaces
Timetables keep turning – and clocks are wound
You’ve got the both ends burning – and worked around
And in their prime
They change their faces“

(Scritti Politti, „Tinseltown to the Boogietown“)

Words: Thomas Venker / Photos: Jonathan Forsythe 

Time is running out. Constantly. A year between two festival editions can seem like a month or two at most.
But time can also expand like a syrup, almost coming to a standstill – especially when you’re out and about with druids of the old rave school.

I’ve spent many festival days and nights, but apart from one very special day at Melt! 2014, none stretched out as endlessly as the opening day of this year’s Making Time Festival.

Time, however, could not have picked a better day for her special trick, almost exactly one year (in conventional time) after what has gone down in Philadelphia history as the “Flood of Fort Mifflin Day”, the historic fort complex, idyllically situated between the airport and the Delaware River, presents itself as immaculate as if the mud had never stood a meter high here (the complex is nicknamed “Mud Island Fort” for a reason), and as exhilarated as if it is the very first time that visitors have entered the area: entered the area since the British Army dropped its bombs on the fort in the fall of 1777 during the American Revolutionary War.

The sun is shining, it’s a wonderful late summer temperature and everyone who has turned up for the third Making Time Festival is ready to spend the best days of their summer here, regardless of whether they put a Brat in front of it or have never heard of it because they’re too old for social media – because alongside the very young main congregation of visitors, there’s also a solid 40+ cohort, much to the delight of established ravers like me.

The lineup on this day (as on all three festival days) is a colossal overload, as you constantly have to choose from several compelling options (the same goes for the absurdly good food offerings, including a pop-up of Barcelona’s Bar Brutal restaurant).).

Because even if time is stretched to infinity, you still don’t have several bodies to be everywhere at the same time (a basic law of physics that always applies, unless your name is Demi Moore and you have access to completely different substances) – and the distances between the five stages don’t get any shorter when the seconds stretch out.

The festival opens with three performances by musicians whose releases have significantly shaped 2024 for me:

Claire Rousay

Jessica Pratt

Valentina Magdaletti

The rest of the day and night belongs to Carista (who, as at Dekmantel Festival in early August, plays an engagingly dynamic set that virtually dissolves in the sun’s rays), Job Jobse (who I haven’t heard in far too long and who always shines so beautifully when he plays that you, as a dancer, can’t help but fall into his sound anyway: in can’t help but fall into his sound anyway), John Talabot (with one of his justifiably much-praised disco sets), and Floating Points (who, a little critical faculty remains even in a state of dissolved time dimensions, sometimes less is definitely more; in general a plea for clearly defined genre sets), a wonderful relay race of DJ luminaries, just as aptly interrupted by the energetic concerts of Model/Actriz and Marie Davidson.

It could hardly be better, you would think – although the next day will prove me wrong.

Model/Actriz

While the music adds to the endlessness of my perception, it has a less stimulating effect on the drive home. When you have to go to the toilet really urgently, it’s just not nice when every second lasts a century. But somehow things always work out, especially when you’re stuck in other dimensions.
Note to self: develop more understanding for other people in everyday life, because obviously 99% of humanity is constantly in a different time zone to me.

A pool is for swimming.

Please write a hundred times on the board.
Everyone.
How can you even get the idea that you have to drink your overpriced drink in the pool?

On the other hand, you always need something to complain about, right? So why not leave the hotel pool with a theatrical expression, where the festival is “kindly” hosting an afternoon floor by the pool.

Saturday, for which I have resolved to ignore the advice of my druids at all costs and act conservatively, is opened for us by Theo Parrish. Theo, who likes to be grumpy, has no choice but to get involved in our good humor when he joins us in the hotel elevator and is showered with love. In this respect, we give ourselves some credit for the wonderful sundowner house set he now plays.

2many Djs

Further highlights of Saturday in staccato, because nobody really wants to read long set analyses:
– Nosedrip
–  JDH
– 2many DJs
– Anish Kumar
– Caterina Barberi live
– Paranoid London live

John Talabot closed this magically perfect festival day with a set that reminded me of his legendary Melt! 2014 set with its deep techno character.

Amish Kumar

JG Wilkes (Optimo)

Self-discipline

As we all know, Sunday at festivals requires a lot of self-discipline if you want to get yourself together again. Last year, I was still lying in my darkened hotel room at 6.50pm (ten minutes before DJ Koze’s set started) and swore I would never go to a festival again (so never ever again), physically and mentally battered by a mud tsunami the previous night, before my friend’s Whats App hits finally charged me with FOMO and got me into an Uber – for the record: Koze’s set was of course incredibly good.

Today, the still stable summer weather and the lineup make the departure less dramatic. On site, Time is Away (who had already shown three days earlier at an RVNG Intl. Listening Event that time is not existing in their universe, at least conventional time); Optimo (Escacio) (initially with a rousing hardcore set); Yu Su (really every track that the New Yorker plays seems to have been produced just for her); Paula Tape (unfortunately I only caught the last few bars, but I would have liked to have heard more immediately, not least because she radiates an incredible sense of happiness when she plays); Aurora Halal (a wonderfully dark, energetic, psychedelic techno set, stylistically in itself (which is worth an extra mention in times when far too many DJs think they have to incorporate as many genres as possible) and yet performed with an open gesture; Nosedrip (this time with a techno set that fits very well in the grottos of the Fort complex).

Yu Su

Aurora Halal (left) and Paula Tape

For the grand finale of the festival, we are drawn to the main stage, where Bicep play a B2B with Optimo (Espacio). Perhaps not the best set they’ve played in their lives, but that’s not the point at this moment. Behind them, Making Time organizer Dave P and his partners in crime and fun Lauren and several team members are enjoying what Dave will later call the best day of his life.

Honestly, when I literally crawled out of the mud from the site in 2023, I wouldn’t have put any stock in the fact that the Making Time Festival would see another edition.
The team has really done a fantastic job, fueled by their love of music and their hometown of Philadelphia, supported by an international community of artists who appreciate what special things are being built here – and in 2024, with the support of the weather god Raijin.

For a brief moment, I regret that I didn’t give the druids another chance, as this wonderful day would never come to an end. On the other hand, sometimes it’s good to call it a day. So while most of the other visitors make their way to the after-show party, I wisely remember my lessons from the previous year and various other occasions and spare my body the aches and pains the next day and all the bad buzz they would mean for the flight back to Europe.

I will be back in 2025, no question. If only to avoid ending the follow-up report with another cheap joke, like this reference to the Suntory whisky commercial in Sofia Coppola’s film “Lost in Translation”:

„For relaxing times, make it Making Time time“