MY SECOND STORY - FIRE
“Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, is - like everything else in this world - purely coincidental.”
Unknown
2 - BECOMING TWO
I am sitting on one of the thick branches of a large tree.
The tree is dark and old, and carry no leaves, yet it seems to be very much alive.
I somehow get the feeling that the tree might be able to live forever, although I myself don’t feel particularly immortal sitting in it.
A young girl is looking up at me from another branch down below.
She is very upset, and tears are rolling down her cheeks.
Deep within I know that this is my doing.
3 - THE MIND MACHINE
I am five years old, and I’m asleep in a cabin on my father’s ship.
In the middle of the night, I suddenly wake up.
It is dark outside, and the ship is moving slowly through the black waters.
I get out of bed and exit the cabin into an empty corridor.
The ship seems to be abandoned.
All I can hear is a low, humming noise coming from somewhere above my head.
I find the stairs and climb towards the sound.
The sound seems to enter my consciousness from within my mind, and not through my ears.
At the top of the stairs, I find myself at the bridge of the ship.
It seems to be empty, but I can feel a strong presence of someone else being in the room.
The humming sound has now turned into a modulated, muffled sequence, like some incomprehensible language, and I realise that the sound and the presence I have been sensing is coming from across the room.
I look around, but there’s still no-one to be seen.
But as I look towards the navigational instruments that are lined up in front of the bridge, it strikes me.
The sound is the voice of the radar console, shining its flickering green light into the darkness, trying to tell me its secrets.
9 - MY SECOND STORY (FIRE)
Lies. Lies. Lies.
Don’t believe a word I’ve been saying!
Or, believe some.
But be sceptical.
As any informed person should be.
Yes, it’s true that I was born in the Arctic, and yes, my dad was a captain at sea.
I also have two brothers.
But the actual truth is, my childhood was nothing like I described in my previous story.
It was dead boring.
My dad being away half the time, and this being Norway in the seventies - before we discovered vast amounts of oil in the North Sea and became one of the most privileged nations in the world, meant we didn’t have much when I was little.
We didn’t travel anywhere on holiday, or have a car, so we could drive the four to five hours it took us to get to the nearest town, Narvik, where they had a train station that connected them to the rest of Scandinavia through Sweden.
We didn’t even go on weekend trips to Northern Finland to buy cheap meat, as most of my friends’ families did.
We were stuck.
I remember the seventies as a dull mix of long silences mid conversation, middle-aged men smoking on TV and shades of faded green curtains, only interrupted by the odd orange and brown striped knitted sweater.
And shit music.
Lots of it.
Progressive rock performed by balding dinosaurs, and pop songs with lyrics describing the sadness of dying from cancer just as summer set in.
I liked Hot Butter’s “Popcorn”, though, and later on, when I got a cassette tape of Kraftwerk’s “Man Machine” from a friend, everything clicked into place.
I remember it well.
I was sitting in my room, assembling a DIY electronics kit that promised to function both as an FM radio AND a tone generator.
I put on “The Robots” and my life instantly had meaning.
I was 11 years old by then.
But more of that later.
Most of my childhood days were pretty uneventful.
I spent my free time skiing in the winter, which lasted for 7-8 months, or playing with other kids out in the woods during the short, sunny summers.
The summers seemed to last for an eternity back then.
I guess that is a good thing.
On rainy days I liked building fantasy structures with Lego in my room.
Creating miniature worlds.
A tiny plastics mason.
Playing God.
I had friends, though.
They came and went as our fields of interests changed.
None of them became lifelong acquaintances.
Some due to their bad taste in music.
And I had girlfriends.
I was far too young, of course.
But so were they.
Still we kissed in the dark.
Which I liked.
Otherwise there’s not much I can recall that would be worth telling you about.
After the uneventful seventies, the transition into the eighties felt like an opening of floodgates of possibilities.
It would become the decade during which my future was shaped.
I was 14 in 1980.
Punk had already happened in the UK, without much notice to us.
London was far from the Polar Circle back then.
Mind you, one of my friends bought “Never mind the bollocks” by The Sex Pistols when it was released in 1977, but I didn’t really like the music, although I could relate to the energy it radiated.
But anyway I had already discovered Kraftwerk.
It seemed to me that punk was all about destroying the past, whereas electronic music was about building the future.
I would rather be on the building team.
Luckily, in the years that followed the shift into the new decade, lots of new and exciting music started arriving.
Along with otherworldly looks.
But the music that hit me the most when I was 14 years old, was decorated with the black and white squares of 2 Tone Records.
It was music that moved me.
The beats.
The attitude.
The message.
When the quirky Norwegian answer to the new British ska wave turned up in the shape of The Aller Værste, I instantly became a fan.
I still am.
On another side of the musical spectrum, weird sounds from California started arriving by mail-order.
San Francisco’s Ralph Records provided me the avant-garde sounds and hallucinatory imagery of The Residents, and the art-rock genius of Tuxedomoon.
A proper education.
At 15 I played drums in a post-punk band, trying to fuse all of my influences into an original style.
We ended up sounding like a typical New Wave band.
And by now I was mostly listening to synth pop anyway.
Enter the drum machines.
In the band I was trying to keep the time like a Linn Drum.
Failing, of course.
So soon I was selling my drum kit, got a job as a cleaner, and saved up enough money to buy my first drum machine.
A Roland TR-808.
In 1983.
Me and my friends got hold of some synths.
Korg MS-20’s and Roland SH-09’s.
And went for instant bedroom superstardom.
We stayed up all night, drank endless mugs of instant coffee and smoked cigarettes, trying to get the machines to obey our visions.
Most of the time they didn’t.
But we had fun.
Apart from the odd tape release, and local gigs, none of our efforts succeeded in connecting us to the rest of the world, or the sub-cultures that inspired us.
So however much we wanted to communicate, detachment was all I felt.
A disconnection from the “real world” that I imagined existed elsewhere.
So I left.
Never looking back.
Until now.
And as I’m sitting here, in a small rented room in Berlin, all of the above events seem to have happened aeons ago.
The sequence of choices that brought me here are impossible to undo.
Bridges have been burnt.
And I have a brand new choice to make.
One that might mean life or death.
A basic, binary problem.
10 - HOW I GOT HERE
The situation is this:
I am sitting on a rather uncomfortable, wooden chair in a small room in Neukölln.
In front of me is a brown desk, and on top of it lies a black notebook in which I am writing these words.
To my left, a cup of the finest Matcha-iri genmaicha tea gives off its familiar rice-tinted fumes into the cold winter air.
To my right lies a loaded gun, and behind me a string of more or less considered choices.
And their consequences.
I first came to this city in 1987, when I’d had enough of my shitty little home-town.
I had not planned to end up here, but a lot of the music I was interested in at the time came out of here.
Bands like Einstürzende Neubauten.
Neue Deutsche Welle.
I made some ideas about how the city would be like when I listened to this music.
Ideas that turned out to be all wrong.
But as another long and dark winter had started losening its grip back home that year, I had bought an Interrail-ticket for the summer, which meant that I could go wherever I wanted around Europe for a month.
So as summer approached, I caught a coach to the nearest town with a railway station, and jumped on the first train towards the south.
From there on I could relax and follow the tracks wherever they would take me.
Not that there were that many options.
There seldom are with train tracks.
But I soon found myself racing down the west coast of Sweden, and after a short ferry journey, the east coast of Denmark.
Arriving in Copenhagen, I didn’t really know where to go to next, so I just got off at the station to get some cigarettes and food.
In that order.
I checked the board for possible transits, and found that a train to Amsterdam would leave in less than an hour.
I decided that Amsterdam was the place to go.
As I made the decision, I could feel my shoulders ease from the usual tension, and life felt better than ever.
No plans.
No schedule.
Just the freedom to do whatever I pleased at any given moment.
They way I wanted it to be.
When the train pulled up, I got on, rigged myself in a seat, and pulled my Sony Walkman out of my bag.
I put on one of my mixtapes, and stared absently out the window at the people hurrying about the platform outside, when my eyes caught a familiar face.
It was a friend of mine from back home.
He smiled as he saw me through the window, and I got up and lowered it.
“What are you doing here?”, he asked.
“I’m not sure, actually”, I answered, “But it seems I’m going to Amsterdam.”
“Sounds like a good idea. Mind if I join you?”, he replied.
I didn’t.
He was my kind of guy.
As we rolled out of the station, sat face to face in the train coupé, armoured with a set of headphones each, I knew his would be a companionship of minimal verbal conversation, which suited me perfectly.
The entire trip to Amsterdam was spent looking out the window and changing tapes when they ran out, only abrupted by regular walks down the isle to the smoking carriage for a cigarette or two.
When we finally arrived at Amsterdam Centraal, we grabbed our backpacks and walked out of the station, where our future plans ended.
Looking around the crowd of tourists, junkies and hustlers, we decided to sit down on the ground to see if any new plans emerged.
It was early in the evening, and as we had no idea of where to stay the night, we decided to postpone any decicion on the topic.
Instead, we started walking up towards the Red Light District, where we knew there were some coffee shops.
I didn’t smoke dope regularly, but had been familiar with it ever since a school trip in 8th grade, when a girl I used to hang out with in class took me to the side and snuck us off into the woods.
She sat us down under a tree and pulled a chillum pipe out of her handbag, lit it up and handed it to me.
I smoked, and was underwhelmed, as with most things.
But the Amsterdam coffee shops were still a curiousity to a Scandinavian youth in the eighties, and we didn’t know what else to do, getting stoned seemed a feasible option.
We found a place that seemed not too popular, picked out a couple of bags of weed at the counter, and sat down by a table and rolled up.
I pulled the walkman out of my bag and handed my friend the extra headphones.
Then we disappeared into the music as clouds of smoke filled the air.
Night had started falling when the batteries of the Sony had lost enough power to make us notice the slowing-down of the music.
We decided that we might as well start looking for somewhere to stay the night, and got up and left the café.
Walking the Amsterdam streets at night with heavy eyelids and backpacks is a clear giveaway, and soon enough we were hit by a hustler whose job was luring young, stoned tourists to stay at a hostel-ship down by the harbour.
We didn’t disappoint his judgement, and followed him back through the train-station to the dark areas beyond.
As we registered at the front desk, the Pied Piper of stoned backpackers got his commission, and disappeared into the night, hunting whatever was on his list of cravings.
We were still loaded with a selection of pretty potent grass, so as soon as we settled in our cabin, we inserted some fresh batteries in the Sony, put on a set of headphones each, smoked as much as we could handle, and drifted off to sleep on a cloud of cotton.
We both slept well into the next day, and only got up when the heat and stench of sewers that filled the boat reached its bearable threshold.
Packed up, and on our way out to hit the town for some late breakfast, we stumbled upon a couple of German backpackers in the corridor outside the cabin.
Two giggling white boys with dreadlocks, playing dub reggae off the boombox that one of them carried.
After exchanging formalities in the usual backpacker lingo (“Where are you from?”, “Where are you going?” and “Mind if we join you?”), all four headed towards town in the baking sun, armed with fresh expectations and hungry stomacs.
It turned out the guys were from Berlin, and the conversation soon turned into one of music.
And of politics.
The kind that demanded big changes to the status quo, without presenting any real alternatives.
Youthful willpower at its best.
We agreed on what we thought to be the problems of the world, and as if to celebrate the political breakthough, sat down and rolled a joint at the first coffee-shop we could find who served food and actual coffee.
After a string of joints, several cups of coffee, and a selection of foods that started out quite nutritious and gradually ended up consisting of little more than sugar, due to the amount of weed smoked, we thanked each other for the sharing of goods and chat.
Then we headed in each our directions, but not before exchanging contact details and a “If you ever find yourself in Berlin, we have plenty of room in our squat.”
The pair of blonde dreadlocks disappeared in the direction of the harbour, and me and my friend decided our ways also parted here.
We shook hands with a smile and few words, knowing both agreed that the best of times had been had.
I sat down on the sidewalk, had a cigarette, and wondered what to do with all my freedom.
I decided to check out the Van Gogh museum.
For no particular reason, I’d had quite a passionate hang-up with the painter, which was actually rather strange, as my interest in art in general was totally absent.
The art world belonged to old people.
Irrelevant people.
But Vincent had caught my interest, and I’d read all the biographies I could find on his rather sorry life.
Finding a strange resonance, that I didn’t understand at the time.
Even though I though I knew what to expect as I entered the first hall in the museum, I was totally taken by surprise at my own reaction to the paintings, now that I could see them in the flesh, and not just as dodgy reproductions in Taschen books.
The sunflowers were alive.
Vincent’s stare more intense than any real eyes I’ve ever looked into.
Works of Magick, charged with the soul he so painfully but willingly gave away.
I ended up walking around the museum until closing time, and by the time I was on my way out, I felt Amsterdam had shown me all it had to offer for now.
Walking down towards the Centraal Station in the evening sun, I knew I had to keep up the flow I was in, and didn’t offer a thought about where to go next.
Inside the station, the information board listed an upcoming train to Paris, and as I couldn’t find any reasonable objections, I decided Paris to be next.
But as I was waiting on the platform, just before the train I was expecting, another train came rolling in.
One with “Cologne” spelled out in bright luminous letters above its front doors.
So Cologne it would be.
The first part of the journey was uneventful, although my inner voices were busy making up fantasy scenarios about what would be expecting me.
Then I fell asleep.
17 - COME TO BERLIN
As the train rolled into Cologne, I could feel the warm summer breeze flowing in through the open window.
The plaza outside the station was full of young travellers, lazily lounging on stone stairs, resting against their backpacks while chatting and drinking beer in the heat.
I scanned the square for some shade, and opted for the same.
I’m of northern blood, and rather incompatible with high temperatures.
Looking at my fellow backpackers, I started playing a game that had become one of my favourite pastimes when travelling alone.
I would pick out totally unknown people from a safe distance, study them, and then try and imagine what their lives were like.
Most times these fantasies would leave me puzzled at how different lives people of seemingly similar appearances led, even though for all I knew, their actual lives weren’t very different from my own.
I guess it was a way of projecting the alienation that I had always felt.
Believing others to be “others”.
When I couldn’t stand the combination of the baking sun and my own imagination any longer, I decided to check out the Kölner Dom.
I’m pretty far from what you would call religious, and could count the times I’d been inside a church on one hand.
But I’ve always been pretty awestruck by monumental buildings.
Maybe because they reminded me of the heavy mountains I grew up surrounded by.
They were all structures that represented a much needed stability in a life that seemed to be moving faster and faster, even back then.
Inside the cathedral, I walked around in silence and tried to use the void of the place to think of what to do next.
Staying overnight in a city I knew almost nothing about musically didn’t feel very attractive.
And music, in combination with the subcultures that came with it, were my only beacons when it came to navigating in life at the time.
Of course I would later learn more about Cologne’s musical history, and how it essential it had been in informing all the bands I grew up with, but I guess I was happily ignorant about the width of musical history outside my own narrow window.
And, like most people that age, I thought my contemporaries were the first to ever get their ideas.
Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it, someone wise once said.
The stone walls of the cathedral suddenly felt slightly claustrophobic, so I returned outside.
Facing the all too hot afternoon didn’t help matters much.
I put my hand in my pocket, and pulled out the napkin upon where I had written the address for the Berlin squatters I met.
Berlin.
I liked the sound of the city.
And at least it had fostered some of the bands I loved.
Plus a couple of weedheads that welcomed me to their house..
I decided to get out of Cologne on the first train.
Back inside the station I checked the board for the next eastbound intercity train, and found there was one leaving in a couple of hours.
This left just enough time to get some food, smoke some cigarettes and waste some of the time that seemed so abundant back then.
And so precious now.
As the train moved out of the station, it instantly felt as if I’d made the right choice.
I put a C90 in the walkman.
“Halber Mensch” by Einstürtzende Neubauten on one side.
“Oben Im Eck” by Holger Hiller on the other.
Drifting into the music and movement of the train, my mind started playing around with different scenarios of what it would be like arriving in Berlin, but I soon got tired of it and decided it was best to leave reality to surprise me.
Or disappoint me.
18 - KREUZBERG
I arrived in Berlin on a late summer’s day in 1987.
I immediately got the feeling that there was a special energy about the city.
As if its collective soul already knew that change would come soon.
Big change.
Just what I was looking for.
I called up the squatters I’d met in Amsterdam, and set off to Kreuzberg to meet them.
Their place turned out to be one of the surviving squats from the early eighties.
An old factory that had been refurbished into a living and working space for a bunch of artists and young people with new ideas about how to live their lives.
Some of them came from other parts of Germany and had moved here in order to dodge military service, and some were simply looking for adventure, escaping their previous dull existences in sleepy towns.
Like me.
You also had a number of die-hard punks from the early Besetzer days, who seemed to mix pretty well with the younger crowd, even though parts of their mentality was a bit outdated.
Our generation was, after all, entering the future, not fighting the past.
Luck would have it that I was offered a vacant room in the squat.
An offer I couldn’t refuse.
So I moved to Berlin.
Mostly by chance.
Like with most things that has happened in my life.
The first few months I spent exploring what my new city was all about.
People.
Art.
Sex.
Drugs.
And music.
The electronic music I’d been listening to back home still had a stronghold on the scene I entered into.
EBM was a big thing.
Electronic Body Music.
Front 242.
Nitzer Ebb.
Non-German bands desperately trying to sound German, I thought.
Carrying the ideas that Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft launched onto another level.
I liked it.
A lot.
But the sound of electronic music was about to change.
In fact, it already had.
Across the Atlantic.
The first sign I got of this was a cassette tape given to me by an aspiring DJ living down the road.
An aspiring DJ who coincidentally also operated as a dealer.
You had to be creative in order to survive back then.
The tape contained a mix of Acid House from Chicago and Techno from Detroit.
A black BASF C90.
Type II.
At first I didn’t get this new music at all.
It just sounded like beats and bleeps with no structure.
Unfinished ideas.
On repeat.
And the “songs” contained no vocals, except the odd single-word sample, re-triggered without end.
Or sometimes a full sentence, if the sampling time of the producer’s gear allowed it.
“Bounce your body to the box”.
But then, one night as we were just hanging out at the house after taking some acid, I put the tape in the boombox.
And everything clicked.
The squelching basslines and spluttering beats suddenly made all the sense in the world.
Like an ensemble of electric rubber-bands bouncing inside my mind.
Beats flowing forward, then stopping for a breakdown, then catching up again.
Standing still but moving endlessly, like a frozen moment racing along at the speed of light.
It sounded like the future, but the future of a parallel and much more fun universe.
I started laughing, and totally lost myself in the music.
Never to return.
In hindsight, I guess I should have read the sign, and seen what was coming.
It was as if everything new emerging at the time did so in order to prime us for the breakthrough that happened later.
In ’94.
The mind-expanding psychedelic drugs, the otherworldly music, the strange new technologies.
Plus the rapid changes in global politics.
We were clearly being prepared for something.
But could not in our wildest imagination have known what was to come.
We just rode along.
At least some of us did.
As I settled more and more into my new situation, my focus slowly shifted from socialising 24/7 to start setting up a studio in my room and get on with making music.
I had sold all my gear before leaving Norway and had, somehow miraculously, managed to keep enough the money so I could re-invest in a new setup.
Kaos management, I believe you could call it.
I went for an Atari 1040ST computer running C-Lab Creator, and an E-Mu Emax sampling keyboard.
I also picked up a used Roland TR-909 drum machine plus a TB-303 Bass Line from a thrift store, for next to nothing.
Nobody wanted these kind of machines for their over-produced 80’s garbage pop at the time.
All set up, I picked up where I’d left, only with new inspiration.
Chasing a new sound.
This would involve days where I stayed up for 48 hours programming beats, supported by cheap Polish speed and beer.
On other days, I’d invite people from the squat to come around for some magic mushrooms and just hang out in my room while I played with the Emax factory bank “Loon Garden” for hours.
Needless to say, there were situations that were more productive than others, but all in all it was part of developing a skill-set for making the kind of music that I’ve spent the last three decades making.
In the city around me, the imported sounds from the US spread quickly.
Small clubs started popping up, people started dancing again, and soon you could see the odd smiley t-shirt worn by strangers on the street.
Eventually some of the originators from the US were brought over to DJ.
Jeff Mills.
Juan Atkinson.
The true inspirators.
I was not the only local musician adapting to this new development in music and club culture.
I would soon bump into likeminded music geeks, discussing gear and techniques, raving over new 12inch vinyl singles that sounded like nothing we’d ever heard before.
But were very keen to try and copy.
With mixed success.
Needless to say, I thrived.
This was what I had escaped my sleepy hometown for.
All I had hoped to find and become part of.
A new life.
After a period of trying, and mostly failing, I had finally managed to record a selection of my new beats onto tape, and boldly made cassette copies to hand out to friends and DJ’s.
The first reactions were lukewarm.
My beats didn’t sound like they came from Detroit or Chicago, or even like some of the new tunes coming out of the UK.
Probably because they didn’t.
They came from an Arctic immigrant living in Berlin.
I soon understood that I had to reach out beyond the city wall, literally, and decided to start sending cassettes to some of the labels abroad that I reckoned put out the most interesting music.
At first, I was met with radio silence.
I guess the amount of tapes some of the labels received were so numerous that it was difficult to notice anyone at all.
But one day, the pay-phone we had gotten installed down the hall rang, and after some shouting up stairwells and knocking on doors, I ran downstairs and picked up the receiver.
And was offered my first recording opportunity.
The label was a Belgian dance subsidiary of a well-known indie label.
It seemed like everyone was trying to get on the bus with these new sounds.
They invited me to come to a studio in Brussels to re-record some of my demos, and maybe lay down some new tracks with some of their already signed artists.
I agreed on the spot, immediately realising that I knew nothing about Belgium, or where it was.
I had a slight hunch that the country was situated on the mediterranean coast somewhere around Albania.
Or Croatia.
Something I didn’t mention in the call.
We agreed that they send me train tickets in the mail, and that I should just pack my floppy disks, as the studio was well equipped.
They had their own Atari and Emax, amongst a ton of other professional equipment including an SSL desk and Studer 24-track tape recorder.
All of which I was super-exited to get my hands on.
I would bring my TB-303, though.
Some things are essential.
Back in my room, I rolled a fat spliff and sat down by the sampler.
I grabbed the mic, armed the sampler, and shouted “YES!” as loudly as I could.
Then I just sat there, stoned, repeatedly hitting the keys at different pitches.
Finally, I was going places.
21 - BRUXELLES
The sessions in Brussels started well.
I’d installed myself in an old house that the owner of the label kept as an extra storage space for records, obsolete music equipment and heaps of old paperwork.
And rubbish.
And visiting artists.
I liked it a lot.
I had moved into the spacious bedroom on the 1st floor.
The room had a high ceiling and large windows, and the walls were clad with dark wooden panels.
A beautiful old glass door led out to a balcony facing the back garden, which was overgrown and unkempt.
Perfect, to my eyes.
Next to the bedroom was a large bathroom with a tub, where I could zen out when the nighttime studio sessions ended in the early morning.
I would lie in the hot water, having a smoke and a cold beer, before going to sleep for the day.
In other words, my life was a newborn techno musician’s dream, with a classic bohemian touch.
The first nights in the studio were spent trying out some new beats, using the vast arsenal of machines available.
The beloved TR-808 and a brand new E-Mu SP-1200 being the main tools.
Grainy samples and booming kicks got blended with basslines from a TB-303.
Then everything was mixed through a massive SSL desk onto 24-track analogue tape.
Overkill, but state of the art.
Sonic heaven.
All the parts were programmed on the Atari 1040 before committing them to tape, and then we did the mixes live on the desk down to an Otari MX-5050 2-track reel to reel recorder.
Every pass would be different, so we just kept on recording until we ran out of tape.
Finally, different sections of the mixes were copied and duplicated to another 1/4-inch machine, and then edited using a razor blade and splicing tape to create the final masters.
Looking back, I can’t really fathom how we bothered to go through such a meticulous process, but I guess it’s also the reason my musical journey continued via software programming and computer editing, back to working mainly with hardware instruments.
The sessions in Brussels also had a social aspect.
Every night, other nocturnally inclined artists, who were connected to the label would drop in and hang out for a listen, a smoke or a drink or two.
These encounters would usually make the energy in the room change for the better, and I found it inspiring to have all these people hanging around to chat gear and new ideas with.
The only downside was that it would stretch an already expensive studio time to double.
I also got to learn about the various reasons for some of these individuals stranding in Brussels.
One such educational situation emerged when I, after a few working nights, got a pretty heavy tooth-ache in the middle of a session.
Being used to the regulations of a far less liberal country, I was surprised to find that there was a 24-hour dental service in the city centre.
After a swift taxi ride and consultation, I was sent back with a paper bag full of brown bottles, and a suggestion to take it easy.
And if the pain didn’t stop, I was to use the contents of the brown bottles.
Upon my return to the studio, the entourage of hangarounds surrounded me, and after a polite but brief questioning regarding my well-being, moved straight into examining the contents of my paper bag, like kids around a pharmaceutical piñata.
It turned out that the large bottles I’d been given contained stronger opiates than was available on the street market in any other city.
In generous amounts.
And voila, the mystery of why international artists kept stranding in the future capital of the European Union was solved.
After a week and a half of nighttime work, the studio sessions ended.
The results were assessed at the record company offices, and it was decided that the material was fit for several 12-inch releases on their new dance label subsidiary that they had set up to ride with the changing times.
Some of these contained recordings that were more or less planned collaborations, but also a couple of tracks I’d done on my own.
Two of these were picked out for a solo release.
My first.
I was happy enough with the results, and decided to pack up and return to Berlin while the records went into production.
It somehow felt as if I’d reached an important goal by finally getting a record released, but at the same time there was a slight sense of anti-climax lurking in the back of my mind.
This was a time of “faceless techno bollocks”, so all credits of my work got assigned to different pseudonyms.
Actually, on one of the records, I had chosen to be credited for three different names on the same record.
One for writing the track, one for producing it, and one for engineering it.
It was as if this use of imaginary names created the necessary distance between the work and myself.
Why, I don’t know.
Maybe it was just in case I didn’t like what I’d done after some time.
There were surely no chance that I’d made something I couldn’t stand the thought of being responsible for, was it?
Still it was safer this way.
Back in Berlin I wound down for a few days, just hanging out at the house, smoking weed and listening to music.
It didn’t bother me much that my smoking habits had escalated since I left home.
And I didn’t question the seemingly endless flow of new drugs that I got introduced to.
They were the tools of the trade, and even though I didn’t know where this path would lead me, I didn’t offer it too much consideration.
After all, the greatest gateway drug is society.
22 - FAKE IT TILL YOU MAKE IT
My first records were released in 1988.
To lukewarm reception.
Not that it mattered much.
I had already moved on.
Through sending out more tapes of my own tracks, and due to chance meetings at warehouse parties, I’d landed opportunities to release more material through a handful of other labels before the end of the year.
I had also started playing gigs, both as a DJ and live.
The DJ part was a bit of a scam.
At first.
But imposter syndrome wasn’t invented yet.
So even though I’d collected vinyl records since I was 6 years old, I had never beat-mixed two tracks together on turntables before I was booked to do my first gig.
It was a “mixed” pleasure, both for me and for the crowd.
But learning by doing had always been my method.
And to be honest, no-one really knew what was going on in the chaos that was the early Acid House scene in Europe.
My genuine, but rather unskilled approach, mixed with too many pre-gig drinks, topped itself when I, at a 3000 capacity club outside Antwerp, noticed that the stylus on the playing deck was full of dust.
Briefly forgetting where I was, I instinctively bent down, lifted the tone-arm and blew at the stylus as hard as I could.
This used to do the trick at my home stereo, but powered by a 10.000 watts sound system it was a totally different game.
The noise was menacing.
And the laughter from the crowd of epic proportions.
But still, just seconds later, they all continued dancing as if nothing unusual had happened.
I found the general lack of taking oneself too seriously very liberating.
God knows I had done so enough in the past.
In my former life.
But even events like these didn’t get in the way of me getting more and more bookings, and as soon as more of my tunes were pressed on shiny black plastic, I also got asked to do live PA’s, as they were called back then.
These presented an even bigger challenge than DJ gigs.
All of a sudden, tunes that had been through a process of programming, mixing and detailed tape editing was to be performed “live”.
The thought of filling a van with fragile and expensive gear, set it up among a sweaty, drugged up crowd of dancing semi-zombies, and then go on to make all the processes that I’d spent days on in the studio happen “on the fly” wasn’t a particularly attractive one.
I landed on the same solution that most of the artists emerging on this new scene did, which was to compile my tracks seamlessly on a DAT-cassette, and then bring along a mixer and a bunch of outboard effect units to mash up the tracks with.
This meant that I could present my tunes in a more or less acceptable way, but still dub them out with all kinds of effects, ranging from echo and reverb to extreme distortion.
It even left room for waving my hands in the air at select moments.
To stunning effect.
But the funniest part was the backstage vibe among these “live” acts.
You’d sheepishly sit there with all these artists who are now thoroughly established as pioneering figures on the early scene - names that are regarded “legendary”, throwing each other half-embarrassed looks at catching everyone miming on stage.
Like teched-up versions of Milli Vanilli (look it up).
This was possibly when the seeds of imposter syndrome were sawn.
But I didn’t give a shit by this point.
By 1989 I was travelling to parties every weekend, playing my tunes to ecstatic crowds in abandoned warehouses that seemed to expand in size for every new gig.
The world had finally tuned in and dropped out.
For the second time, I was told.
The impact on everything from social codes to politics made a huge impression, but it was on a personal level that this slight revolution was felt the most.
And on the technological level.
We were slowly going digital, even if only a few knew at the time.
Now, this would be a good time to tell you more amazing tour stories.
About the crazy events.
The pools of drugs.
The debauchery.
But in all honesty, I can’t remember much from the years that followed.
All I know is that I travelled a lot.
And played a lot.
Even released quite a few records, according to Discogs.
Got waisted.
Got laid.
And the next thing I knew.
It was 1994.
23 - THEY’RE HERE ’94
And this is when it all starts getting a bit weird.
Even to my liking.
The rave scene in Europe and the UK expanded beyond my wildest dreams over the five years that passed since I first caught on to the new beat of the drum.
By the summer of ’94, hard techno was the new stadium sound, with every mainstream festival putting the biggest names in electronic dance music on the top of their bill.
The radio stations played mostly dance records, and sales were booming.
What would have been considered a strictly underground sound only a few years earlier was now topping the charts.
To enhance the experience, the amount of Ecstasy consumed in major European cities was so vast that even the sewer rats were constantly loved-up.
High on post-party piss.
It was in the middle of this mayhem that I suddenly woke up.
Through a wake-up call coming in the shape of a very unexpected encounter.
Mildly speaking.
The way I remember it is this:
I had just flown back from a weekend gigging in Barcelona.
I’d been partying hard, as usual.
Unable to sleep, I was sitting on the couch in the living-room of the flat I was staying in at the time.
Temporarily.
I had switched on the TV, lit up a cigarette and opened a cold beer, hoping this would get me sufficiently relaxed to be able to sleep off the weekend over the next day or two.
It was a summer’s night, and I could hear the soothing mix of rattling leaves and distant motors in the city outside my window.
The programme on telly was MTV’s “Chill Out Zone”, a go-to for comedown nerves.
I think the track playing was Biosphere’s “The Shield”.
But that may be a false memory.
Then, as I leaned forward to put out the cigarette in the ashtray on the floor, something caught the side of my eye.
Standing in the kitchen doorway
I leaned back, took a sip from the beer can, and turned my head.
And there it was.
The creature.
It was a tall, nasty-looking thing, towering towards the ceiling.
Its eyes were enormous, dark, and almond-shaped.
On each side of its large, oval skull, horn-like, curly structures peaked out, and its mouth was as wide as its head, sporting an evil grin.
I couldn’t move, and just sat there, paralysed by fear.
I’d never encountered a living creature radiating such negative, dark energy.
The creature slid across the living room floor and stopped right in front of me.
Then started laughing at me.
A mocking, sinister laugh.
Upon which I could feel my fear change into anger.
Raging, bottomless anger, as if every wrong ever done to me was collected into one single emotion.
It was as if the thing could sense my rage, and responded by laughing even more.
Enjoying it to the fullest.
Then I screamed at the top of my lungs, focusing all the fury I felt into the most primal expression I could summon.
And then, without a sound coming from its mouth, it said:
“You don’t belong here.”
And although I knew deep within that it was right, I loathed it even more for telling me this.
The next thing that happened was something I will never forget.
In a split second, the creature suddenly charged towards me, like some kind of alien predator.
I heard myself howl like an animal.
An animal residing at the core of my being.
Old.
Millions of years old.
Every cell in my body was filled with fear.
But just as those dark, bottomless eyes filled my whole vision, and the grin opened to devour my soul, the entire room and everything in it started swirling around, like a whirlpool swallowing the entire universe.
A tunnel opened before me, and the vortex dragged me inside it at lightning speed.
A whooshing sound filled my head, and then everything went still.
I now found myself somewhere totally different from my temporary living-room in Friedrichshain.
The landscape I was surrounded by was totally alien, still familiar in a strange sense.
A deep violet glowing light covered the ground.
The night sky above my head was somehow all wrong.
There were far too many stars in it.
In strange colours.
Looking around, I could see structures in the distance, like buildings.
But they were all curved, and looked nothing like the buildings I was used to.
No squares.
No straight lines.
Then it appeared to me that someone was looking at me.
Fearing that the monster from my living-room had followed me here, I jumped.
But this was something quite different.
In front of me, on the glowing ground, stood a small group of beings the size of children.
They had blueish skin, and long, thin limbs.
Their heads were large and bald, and their eyes as deep as any ocean.
Even though I’d never seen anything like them before, they seemed strangely familiar.
Like very old friends.
As they moved towards me, I fell at ease.
Surrounded, I closed my eyes as I felt their warm hands gently being laid upon my body.
“Welcome home!”, they said.
24 - ANGEL
She comes at night.
The first signs are usually a slight buzzing sensation in my chest or stomach.
Or a high-pitched tone appearing in my left ear.
And then I can feel her.
She smells of clean sheets and home.
And even though I can’t see her, I can hear her whisper.
A soft and comforting voice.
Telling me it will all be fine.
We embrace each other, and I sink into calmer waters.
Where I want to be.
Until the morning breaks the spell.
27 - CROSSROADS
I find myself on a train.
The train is racing through a featureless, bleak landscape.
Outside the window I can see endless fields, only punctuated by the odd group of trees and bushes.
I get up from my seat, and work my way towards the front of the train.
As I reach the driver’s compartment, I find that there’s no-one there.
I look out the front window, and can see that the tracks are divided into three different paths in the close distance.
At the speed the train is moving in, there will be only seconds before I reach the fork.
I realise that I alone have to steer the train into one of the three tracks.
The acuteness of the situation leaves no room for thought, so I have to choose which way to go without consideration.
I randomly choose one of the three options.
That’s where I am now.
31 - RECONNECTING THE DOTS
Following the encounter with the monstrous creature in my living-room in Berlin and the small blue beings that welcomed me beyond the maelstrom in space, my nerves were totally on edge.
It was as if my whole being had been ripped open, and that every emotion I had ignored over the past few years now had to be revisited, and re-lived.
All at once.
The world around me suddenly seemed super bright, and I would become aware of things that I’d never noticed before.
Plants and trees had a special glow to them.
Animals looked as if they knew we were connected in a different way now.
Especially cats.
Also, I could see new details in people.
It was as if everyone, even total strangers, appeared to have certain colours attached to them.
Tuned in different frequencies of light.
I even started remembering odd episodes that somehow had passed my attention in the busy fog of mindless partying that I’d been living inside.
Like that time I played the first Mayday party in Berlin back in December 1991.
In my previous memory of the event, it had just been one hell of a gig, with thousands of ravers gathered in the eastern part of town for the first time I could remember.
Drugs were had, laughs were shared, and new acquaintances made.
What I couldn’t recall before, was that at some point that night, as I was heading for the bathroom, a strange little guy had stopped me in a corridor backstage.
In my newly restored recollection, I could see him as vividly as if it had happened yesterday.
He was a short figure, with greyish skin covered in numerous tribal tattoos, and he seemed old as the sea.
His head was shaven, and he wore some kind of brown, sleeveless cloak.
In other words, he might as well have been any random raver, dressed to party.
When he stopped me, I figured he was one of the other artists playing, or someone involved with organising the event.
But rather than start chatting about the music, or how out of his head he was, or how crazy the crowd was, he rather put his hand on my arm, and said:
“There will be consequences.”
Nothing more.
Then he grinned, and walked off.
At the time, I just shrugged and continued to have my wee, but as I thought about it now, his words had a serious and profound feeling to them.
As if he gave me a grave warning.
A warning I obviously had ignored.
And that now seemed of great significance.
I also came to think of the time I attended a party in London back in 1988.
Just after my first records came out.
I was over in the UK, supposedly to do promotion for my records, in collaboration with the record company’s representatives over there, but my idea of promotion was to first hit the vinyl record stores in Soho, and then sift through all the party flyers on the counter.
After paying for a bag of new vinyl, a decision for the evening was made.
Paul Oakenfold’s “Spectrum” night had moved out of its regular home at the Heaven club in Charing Cross, and into a circus marquee set up for the occasion down at the South Bank.
And off I went.
I was on acid that evening, and thoroughly enjoyed both the music and the location.
Everything seemed normally abnormal.
But a few hours into the night, another raver, sporting a huge grin, came up to me on the dancefloor, and asked:
“What the hell is going on here?”
Upon which I answered:
“I have no clue.”
A simple enough exchange of raver chat.
Then we both started laughing uncontrollably, until I was so exhausted that I had to go outside for some fresh air.
Back outside, I walked across the park, and decided to have a wee in the bushes.
I have no clue why both these memories are loosely connected to urinating.
As I was ridding myself of liquid, the bush I so generously had decided to gratify with my recycled nutritions, suddenly said:
“Why are you pissing on me?”
Upon which I quickly finished my business and left the site.
Walking without thinking, I soon found myself in some kind of tunnel, full of flickering lights.
There were voices coming out of the darkness, and as my eyesight adjusted to the light, I could see that there were people gathered around small fires inside the cave.
I approached one of the small groups, greeted them, and put my hands up to warm them over the fire, whereupon I was asked for a spare cigarette.
Cigs were handed out, and we shared a smoke in silence.
There was a tranquility to the place that I had seldom experienced before.
Like I was surrounded by very wise souls.
After finishing the cigarette, I bid my goodbyes, and left to try and find the rave again.
In hindsight, I had always thought the whole experience had been shared with a crowd of London’s numerous homeless.
Beneath Waterloo Bridge.
But now I had to question if I had actually been in a real cave.
With real cave people.
Smoking cigarettes.
Afterwards, when I finally found the marquee again, I realised that the party had just ended.
The soon-to-be superstar DJ was leaving just as I arrived, and weirdly enough he was followed by two of the prettiest young ladies I’d ever seen.
The strange part was not that a DJ was followed by pretty girls, even though that’s a debatable issue in itself, but that both girls were clad from top to toe in Baroque dresses, with powdered faces and blonde wigs.
They were also carrying his records.
Two full crates of heavy vinyl.
Why on Earth would they do that?
I couldn’t but wonder that what I had witnessed was some kind of glitch in time and space.
It wasn’t as if ancient beauties carrying vinyl record boxes was the most obvious motif I could think of.
But now it seemed of greater significance.
Had I been witnessing these holes in space-time all along?
A third re-surfacing memory involving a possible time-glitch, was when I played at a rave at The Grey Hall in Christiania, Copenhagen.
The Mutoid Waste Company had done up the entire warehouse prior to the party, spending a week building their scrap metal creations. As we played, they were climbing on car wrecks hanging from the roof, sporting home-made flame-throwers and cutting up metal with angle grinders.
It was a ball.
But after my gig, as I was standing on the side of the stage waiting for the next DJ to go on, something didn’t seem right.
Instead of local DJ and organiser Dr Baker coming to the booth, an old lady dressed as the Queen of England entered the spotlight, and immediately dropped a heavy duty techno track of nose-bleed impact.
A beige purse swinging from her elbow.
Surely this was a bit odd, now that I thought of it?
But then again, it could have been just one of those things that would happen at raves back in this day.
Or was it?
These surfacing new memories, added to the shattering experience with the demon-like creature in my living-room, made me think that maybe something strange was going on.
And possibly had been going on for some time.
It was as if I had discovered passages in the veil between worlds.
Holes in time.
And it was this realisation that changed my entire view of the world around me.
Up until this point, I had seen our culture as a sort of summer meadow in full bloom.
Surely we were getting ready for the withering cold death of autumn, but that would be the last of my concerns at the time.
Who would worry about tomorrow?
Not me.
I would rather try to sample as much fun as human civilisation had to offer.
And autumn would come in any way.
Right?
But now things were different.
There was something else out there.
Something I hadn’t noticed before.
An outline of a hidden world.
It was time to get moving.
And explore the new dawn.
32 - FINDING NEW WAYS
I had to make some changes.
Big changes.
There was no way I could behave like nothing had happened, and continue to lead my life the way I had before this new insight emerged.
Not that I would opt for the kind of “leave town, stop doing music and find a monastery” type changes.
That would be too much.
But I felt that the very core of my being had been altered in some profound way, and that I had to take the consequences.
As predicted.
To my surprise, the first change I made, was that I stopped eating meat.
Being vegetarian was not something I had ever seriously considered, even though it had popped up on my radar through popular culture ever since listening to “Meat is Murder” by The Smiths, back in my teens.
Sad times indeed.
What actually triggered the choice, was that I had sat down at my favourite restaurant one night and ordered steak, feeling more hungry than usual.
I don’t eat much.
Not before around midnight.
But as the plate was put in front of me, and I was more than ready to have a go at it, my hands just froze, cutlery in hand.
Although my stomach screamed for food, I just couldn’t make myself eat.
Instead of a juicy steak, I now saw a corpse lying in front of me.
I felt that I was staring at death.
The realisation took me by total surprise, but there was nothing I could do about it.
Something deep inside me had suddenly taken control, and before I knew it I had returned the food, asked for the bill, and walked away.
Passing the night shop with its fruit and grocery stall down the road from my house, I nipped inside and bought a bag full of vegetables and went home to cook my first ever vegetarian dish.
A mixed success, but efficient in stalling my hunger.
And that was that.
No more meat.
The second change I felt had to be made, was going through my entire wardrobe.
Ever since coming to Berlin, my clothes had been a mix of my old black garments that had survived from the pre-acid house days of semi-goth darkness, to jeans and freebie T-shirts from labels and festivals I’d played.
Official DJ uniform stuff.
But now I somehow felt an urge for wearing the most colourful clothes I could get my hands on, and started shopping for the loudest psychedelic tops and tie-dye shirts I could find.
Total clown-puke material.
And I started wearing hats.
Lots of hats.
Not all at once, mind.
It was as if I needed to re-define my exterior in order to mirror the transformation I was experiencing within.
Let my freak flag fly.
Music-wise, I started playing different records than before.
There were more melodies, more moods above the beats than before.
It was no longer a question of playing the loudest and fastest industrial-sounding techno.
Even if I still enjoyed the energy of heavy beats and earth-shattering basslines.
It was more to do with the depth of the productions.
There had to be something hidden deep inside the mix.
In the beginning, all these changes were solely actions taken for my own satisfaction, but after some time it was as if the new signals I was sending out through my actions and appearance started resonating in the world around me.
Strangers would suddenly send me knowing smiles on the Bahn.
A different kind of party people would come up to the booth whenever I played gigs.
Small-talking, but somehow in a different way than the drunken or chemically loved-up blabber I had gotten accustomed to.
It was one of these “new” kind of people that one day came up to me as I was flicking through records at Hardwax in Reichenberger Straße.
My favourite record store.
He had been sending me looks from across the room as he was browsing the new releases section.
Smiling and nodding slowly, as if to confirm his thoughts to himself.
After he had finished his hunt, without picking up any records, he walked across the floor towards me while fumbling inside his shoulder-bag.
As he stood in front of me, he had picked up a small flyer from the bag, no bigger than a business card, which he presented to me as if it was the most precious gift.
“We have a meeting Wednesday”, he said.
“It would be wonderful if you would come along.”
Baffled but curious, I took the card.
In black letters on white background, the letters “E” and “A” where written in an emblem-like fashion.
Like a seal of sorts.
Beneath it was a street address located at the outskirts of town.
I looked at him, projecting the question mark I felt filled my entire being.
“E.A.”, he said, then leant forward and whispered:
“Extraterrestrials Anonymous”.
Upon which I could find no appropriate reply.
33 - UNSAFE TRAVELS
When I got back home, I threw the card on top of the other mess lying on my desk, and decided to forget about it.
The guy was obviously a total nutcase.
Drugs can do wonders that way.
And this city had its fair share of casualties.
“Extraterrestrials Anonymous.”
Ridiculous.
Right?
And how the hell would he think it had anything to do with me?
Enjoying a peaceful afternoon of record browsing at Hardwax.
Case closed.
But I just couldn’t let it lie.
Somewhere deep within, I felt intrigued.
Wasn’t it at least worth checking out?
Even just for the freakshow aspect.
I spent the rest of the weekend and the beginning of the following week pondering the idea back and forth, unable to totally ignore the invitation.
Until I woke up Wednesday morning, and decided to attend the meeting, fully aware that curiosity can kill far bigger mammals than cats.
The address on the card was located in the south-eastern part of town, across the river.
If nowhere had a middle, this was it.
I left the house with a mixed feeling of excitement and nervous scepticism, and after a rather long and boring tram journey, followed by a 20-minute walk, I stood in front of the entrance.
The house was a five storey residential block, and looked like any other house in the area.
I inspected the worn out door-bell panel, and saw that it was full of unsurprising surnames, considering the area I was in.
With one exception.
“E.A.”
Nothing more.
I felt my heart’s bpm rise slightly as I pushed the button, and waited in uncomfortable silence until the speakerphone said:
“Yes?”
I waited an extra couple of seconds, cleared my throat, then stated:
“I’m here for the meeting.”
Whereupon the voice said:
“4th floor. Welcome.”
There was no lift, so I was a little short for breath when I arrived at the entrance of the flat.
The little man from Hardwax greeted me through a half-open door.
He asked me to kindly take my shoes off and follow him, then closed the door behind us.
And I had no way back.
The hallway leading into the apartment was very dark, and I felt a slight panic as I discovered that the walls were actually painted black, and covered with the most horrid little sculptures.
There were tiny demons and gargoyles peeking their awful little heads out of the walls, as if to warn me from walking any further.
It got a little brighter as we approached the end of the corridor, but at the far end, by each side of the door leading to the next room, two large versions of the figures stood staring at me.
Like a pair of devilish gatekeepers.
They somehow reminded me of the monster I had met in my living-room.
Maybe it too had been some kind of gatekeeper?
Trying to scare me from finding the tunnel in space and time.
I suddenly felt victorious, as it obviously had failed miserably.
We entered the next room, and everything lit up.
This room was pained white, and a dozen people or so were sitting cross-legged in a circle in the middle of the room.
They turned their heads as we came through the door, and greeted me with smiles and nods.
The atmosphere in this room instantly made me at ease, so I smiled and nodded back without saying anything.
My little friend pointed at a free space on one of the pillows on the floor, and I walked over and sat down.
Looking around the room, I could see that most of the light sources were made of stone, with the pink glow of rose quartz lamps dominating.
Behind every person sitting on the floor, about one meter tall blueish stone obelisks stood, making it look like some kind of miniature Stonehenge formation.
Small, but still bigger than the one in Spinal Tap.
In the middle of the circle stood a cluster of the largest crystal bowls I’d ever seen, and next to them, on the floor, a set of mallets and tuning-forks were laid out on a piece of blue silk cloth.
It now struck me that no-one talked, except for a few odd whispers flowing around the room like sonic clouds.
After a couple of minutes, a woman entered the room.
She was clad in bright purple from head to toe, with long white hair gathered in a ponytail, and looked extremely healthy, even if she must have been far into her seventies.
The purple woman walked into the middle of the circle without uttering a word, sat down in a lotus position on the floor, picked up one of the tuning-forks, and closed her eyes.
Then she hit her leg with the fork, and put it against the wooden floor as it started ringing.
A clear tone filled the quiet room, and then a woman sitting a couple of pillows to my left closed her eyes and started chanting in the same tone as the vibrations from the tuning-fork.
As the woman’s voice carried on the first note, the purple woman picked up another and bigger tuning-fork, hit it against her leg, and put it to the floor.
A man sitting right across the first chanting woman closed his eyes and picked up the new frequency, adding a second voice to the chant.
This went on until the entire room, except myself and the purple woman, each were singing a tone making up a weird harmony that I couldn’t place anywhere close to a chord I’d ever heard before.
It resonated in a totally different way than the tempered scales I was used to make music with.
It sounded strangely pleasant, and before I knew it, I too had closed my eyes.
But I couldn’t make a sound.
I’ve never used my voice for anything but speaking.
I let my mind drift as I bathed in the sound of the voices, and gradually vague pictures of landscapes popped up in my mind.
They were of vast landscapes in strange colours, unlike any place I’d seen.
Except maybe in dreams.
I tried to open my eyes, and was back in a room full of people chanting in a circle, then close them, and saw the strange landscapes again, as if I was transported between two different places inside myself.
Between two different ways of sensing.
I thoroughly enjoyed the experience, and just sat there popping in and out of this enhanced way of daydreaming.
Then, as I had my eyes open for a couple of seconds, I could see the purple woman pick up one of the mallets.
She leaned over one of the large crystal bowls, and started moving the mallet around its edge in circular movements.
Seemingly out of nowhere, a massive tone rose from the centre of the room.
The sound intensified to a volume I had never heard from an acoustic source before, except maybe from a thunderstorm, and gradually it sounded as if the whole room exploded in sound.
I turned my head, and head that the sound now seemed to also come from blue stones behind us, resonating like some kind of stone-age amplifiers.
I felt my heart beat like crazy as the purple woman added a second note to the cacophony by playing another bowl, and then I had to give in.
As my eyelids closed, I could see a huge spiral vortex engulfing the entire ceiling of the room.
It looked powerful and dark, and far bigger than the one I’d seen in my living-room.
I felt as if it tried to suck the soul out of my body, and felt scared for the first time since coming to this insane gathering.
But it was to no use.
What happened next, was this:
A whooshing sound came gradually fading in beneath the mayhem of sound already present, and grew into an unbearable volume.
And the I, and everyone else in the room, got sucked into the vortex.
TO BE CONTINUED