We camped close to the Renegade Stage. Our theory was that house’s even beats are the easiest to sleep to. Renegade was always playing something pleasantly groovy when I woke up and camping where you could hear music clearly was a good way to get your ass up and out. Renegade’s inoffensive bouncy beats were also the most reliable place to find people at any hour.

2010′s Soundwave (“Copwave”) was apparently unique in that there were police wandering around the site most of the time. Given how Soundwave flaunts liquor laws, I was shocked to learn that the police had turned a blind eye until now. From what I gather, the police were handing out liquor fines and requesting to search peoples’ bags (we need more civil liberties education). Rumours of tasing are greatly exaggerated.

Maybe it’s because there was less drinking, but everyone at Soundwave seemed very polite – more so than clubs and streets in a city. That being said, everyone seems pretty into their own thing and you’d have to put in some work to make new friends.

I saw some great costumes, although there was only one little steampunk girl. Even just having a weird hat and some complementary street clothes helped me feel like I was doing my part. Although many girls were dressed provocatively, it felt more about creativity and less about being slutty than Halloween.

Soundwave definitely doesn’t really get going until the sun goes down. During the day there were an impressive array of party skills on display like hooping, stilt walking, poi and contact juggling. These skills serve not only to entertain the performer but also everybody else around, because there really isn’t much to do at Soundwave during the day.

The people who seemed to be having the most fun and making the most friends were staff and volunteers, even the guy hosing out the toilets (which were quite clean throughout the weekend). I’d love to be involved in setting up and running the festival next year.

I didn’t do any research before I went nor ask people once I was there. Now I realize that it takes much more effort to find good music at Soundwave. Note that there is no trance and little-to-no techno.

Renegade Stage

All house music. I went into Soundwave as a self-identified house fan. Renegade never played anything offensive, but they didn’t play much that excited me, either – I didn’t hear a lot of obvious electro, but my ear may have been overloaded. The beach setup looks awesome, but it’s kind of spread down the beach with the dance floor at one end.

Chill Zone

If there are a bunch of people dancing in your “chill area”, you’re doing it wrong. I was expecting ambient, but the Chill Zone was only downtempo relative to the other stages. The music wasn’t bad, but it seems like a lost opportunity and it got in the way of ordering at Juice Monkey, which was in the middle of the Chill Zone. No comfortable chairs.

Live Stage (“Daielektik”)

This stage is set up for a huge crowd but a lot of the live productions were lame and the fact that this stage was closed half the time make it a black hole in the middle of the festival. I’d rather see the live shows spread around the other stages and something else done with this field.

Liquid Soul

There’s a cliche that jungle stages are always out of the way at electronic musical festivals and Soundwave is no exception. I was never over here in the morning, when I suspect they were playing dubstep, etc., so I mostly just heard drum&bass here – and fell in love. Unfortunately, there was rarely a big crowd. They seemed to be sporadically selling water and hotdogs here. The stage is a bit separate from the beach, but there were cool fire barrels and a laser show on the rocks every night.

The Meadow

I think the music was mostly breakbeat? (The sign post said “groove ahead”.) If you stand in The Meadow in the daytime, you think “this would be awesome full of people at night”. Unfortunately, I don’t think that state ever occured.

The three best things I heard:

1. Nicolas Sfintescu of Nôze (Paris) singing live
2. Shamik (Vancouver) repeating his dubstep beatboxing from Soundwave 2008 when Mat the Alien didn’t show up (probably got abducted again):
   
3. Wookie & Joshua’s (Victoria) progressive tech-house in The Meadow while the sun was still shining through the trees: this is the only time that The Meadow captured the ewok village feel it seemed designed to evoke.

I attended the Soundwave Electronic Music Festival at Mussel Beach near Ucluelet, BC. Unfortunately, there’s a big music festival in Australia with the same name, so it’s not googleable.

We left Victoria Friday morning but our critical path included waiting for the Ucluelet liquor store to open at 10am. Next time we’ll be sure to buy our alcohol well in advance.

The logging road to Mussel Beach was recently graded and probably the easiest logging road drive I’ve ever been on. Parking was accomplished by a routing volunteer at every intersection, which struck me as a clever way to use manpower to avoid a difficult signage problem.

When we got there, there was still lots of space in Tent City West. We chose Tent City because there’s less wind than on the beach, and it’s close to washrooms, the Renegade Stage and the centre area.

I was really impressed with the food options:

• Fat Daddy’s BBQ serves good eggy breakfasts and pulled-pork made on-site.
• Rice Burners is decent when you feel like a big pile of white rice and veggies.
• Bliss Cafe’s (rebranded “Juice Monkey” to cook eggs and use disposable cups) juice, sweets and soup of the moment provided a lot of diversity and you could pretend it was healthy. They were serving Level Ground drip coffee, but it wasn’t consistently available.

There was good cell coverage (EDGE), but nowhere obvious to recharge phones, so iPhones were effectively out of commission. We had to do pre-mobile-style planning (“meet you at point A in 30 minutes”), although it was common to run into people and not impossible to track people down.

There was effectively no Twittering for Soundwave, but I think it has potential if the organizers gave out incentives to stop partying long enough to tweet. I’d love to be able to whip out my phone to find the music and party of the moment.