|
Recharge Revelation is an annually held music festival in Malaysia that’s five years old and last year saw an attendance of over 15,000 heads. This year it was rebranded Recharge Revelation 5 Global Gathering and was held at the A’Famosa Resort Melaka in Malaysia. Now in its fifth year with Europe’s heavyweight organizers Global Gathering on board, an impressive 40 act lineup, this event was the one marked on most calendars to see this year. But instead, everybody is now asking how a festival with so much hype could fall so short of expectations.  With the 40 acts spread out over 6 arenas in a one day affair, we were spoiled for choice, but we were not so lucky with the venue. The place was completely covered in mud with an aroma of a cow pasture to go with it, after a heavy downpour the night before. The sun was kicking down in the afternoon and there was absolutely no shade on the site and less than a hundred people could find somewhere to sit, so we ended up jumping from one puddle of mud to the next. But if mud was the only culprit the event had a good chance for success. Instead, inadequate bathrooms were quite noticeable. We ended up spending 30 minutes in a line waiting to find out later that there wasn’t anywhere to wash your hands. That might be ok for a number one. I wonder how many hands I shook. The site was still being set up, workmen everywhere and there was no vibe except at the Foam Bar. But the list goes on and could fill this page of nothing but complaining about the venue, so what about the music.
 Well put it this way, if you’re at a club and there are parts of the ceiling falling on you, the speaker volume keeps falling out, and you can’t figure out one word the MC is spitting, then no matter what the DJ is playing, the vibe will just evaporate. With that said, I was looking forward to seeing the Jungle Brothers and Plump DJs, but what a disappointment. The sound system was rubbish and I can’t stress that enough. On the other hand, the main arena, Gods Kitchen, was buzzing after some folks got warmed up to Marcel Woods at about 1:00am. I personally wasn’t up for cutting loose to trance in a field of mud. However, I did take up early afternoon residency at the Foam bar where I witnessed the world’s first sitting MC. The dude was reading a magazine and at the same time spitting gibberish in a comically horrible way with his voice synthesized. It was however the best refuge from the disarray and we enjoyed watching the young Malays getting down with the Melbourne Shuffle. Funny though, it seemed like interval training as after a twenty second spurt, they needed to stop and catch their breath for a few minutes. We gave the indoor tent with the poor sound another go later on, to give support to the Plump DJs who rocked Q bar the night before. They looked frustrated with the whole affair.
 Finally Layo & Bushwacka, offered some of us a bit of redemption at about 1:30am, at the global tent, which fortunately had great sound. There mixing was flawless and it was a masterful techno journey that was not appreciated fully by the crowd who appeared to be tired and worn out by this stage. I’m still trying to get that opera tune out of my head, it got a few smiles from the crowd, and then they were straight back into it without missing a beat, putting the icing on a poorly baked cake.
Overall this event was epically disappointing. The saying ‘if it aint broke don’t fix it’ goes well here. The boys and girls at Recharge Revelation have taken a few steps backward bringing Global Gathering on board to injure a festival that was already growing organically. The organizers are solely to be blamed for the shortcomings and yet they can’t produce a response to the over hyped event. Numerous attempts were made for feedback material from the press people at Global Gathering and the only thing we got back was an answer saying to “look on the website, it’s all online’ without even a link to it. Unofficially, I’ve gathered that there were about 25,000 people that made it to the event, and now the organizers will be spending the next year pointing their fingers at each other while convincing us to invest in their personal fortunes another year. All I can say is good luck and roll on Zoukout! 
You can discuss this article in our forum : Recharge Revelation 5 Forum
 |
