Artmospheric festival 2010

Lyudmila Racheva, VisitBulgaria.net

The fifth annual edition of Artmospheric festival took place from May 21th (Friday) to May 24th (Monday), 2010 at a new location: an area within Vitosha Natural Park, 1150 m above the sea level, close to the road to the old quarries above Vladaya village, 5 km away from the village and 25 km from Sofia city centre.

Artmospheric is a music festival that combines those genres of electronic music such as progressive and psytrance, idm and deep techno, ethno-ambient and dubby.

On Friday evening my boyfriend and I made a good plan to wake up early in the morning and to go to the festival. Unfortunately, we were ready at 6 pm on the next day, and blaming each other for the delay we set off for the place. It takes about an hour to reach the festival's place: first by bus to the village of Vladaya and then there is a 5 km road up in the mountain. We were worried as it was late and almost dark. Moreover, on the middle of our way it was starting to rain heavily. We were ready to go back home, but the mere sport enthusiasm triggered us to continue walking. We were lucky to hitch-hike the last 5 km and therefore there was no need for us to walk up anymore.

By the time we arrived up in the Vitosha Mountain on the festival's place the rain had already stopped. We felt a pounding bass line everywhere, so it was like walking on loudspeakers. People looked slightly tipped, aimless and absent-minded – obviously they didn't pay much attention to the rain. It seemed like everything was following the rhythm.

It was getting dark, so we had to find a suitable place for our tent. After a few rounds we chose a place near a green floodlight. In the odd green light we set up our tent quickly, and impatiently opened a bottle of rum that we took with us from Sofia.

Soon after we went to the main stage, which was very close to our tent. The DJ was under a big white conical tent. Strange visualizations appeared in constant succession on the tent: an eye of Omniscience, shamans and other attributes of trance culture. Right against the DJ's tent there was a fire dancing and fire spinning show - people moving with the beats and watching the fire performance. A bright moon shone high overhead. It seemed like the moon was part of the decorations.

We danced and chatted all night long with the people we met there. When it got cold we drank some rum, ate and warmed near the campfire that was located close to the main stage. By 2 – 3 am we were already tired and thus went back to our tent.

The solid bass pressed us down and whilst we were thinking it won’t be possible to fall asleep, we were already awakened – about 3 hours had passed, the solid bass was still pressing. We drank a big cup of rum with strong black tea to wake up and went outside. It was almost 5 am, people had got up or they didn't fall asleep at all.

The weather was chilly, sticky and foggy, the sun was trying to rise. We decided to walk around the fest zone, it looked like an Indian village with all the tipis around.

Huddled among the trees, the second musical stage was situated on a smaller clearing. The DJ and the Ambient Tea-House were located under a big tipi. Other big tipis and various tents were situated alongside. There were books and drawing stuff under a green tent called "Book Hostel". During the day people read books, told stories, some of them drew, and others played chess and the Chinese game "Go”. Lectures and discussion on environmental protection, used materials recycling and other eco problems were held in the two near-by tipis. There was a tent where vegetarian kitchen was offered, and another one – the bar, where you could buy alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks: coffee, as well as cold beer, rakia (Bulgarian alcoholic drink, so-called ”fire water”) and the already traditional for the Artmospheric - raspberry wine. We didn't miss trying anything.

The sun beams penetrated through the fog and gradually dispersed it. So in the noon it was sunny and warm. The music on the main stage stopped and became unnaturally quiet. Everybody took a relax: some sat on the clearing enjoying the mountain nature, others practiced Yoga and meditated, juggled with balls and played with hoops, played percussion instruments, or resumed moving in trance listening to a bit calmer ambient music on the second stage.


Unnoticeably the day was over, the sun gradually went down, and the music was getting louder, people were refreshed and the performance with visualizations, lights and fire started again. A night cinema shown on the second stage took us on a journey through the depths of the Ocean.

Info and first aid points were open along the course of the festival. There were eco toilets, a tap with fresh mountain water, children's corner and points for separate waste collection. Each one of us patiently separated our waste, thus we managed to keep clean not only the place, but our conscience too.

Now about the music.

A long list of artists from Bulgaria, India, UK, Italy, Macedonia took care about the good music and our perfect mood.

Here are two live sets (about an hour and a half each) from Artmospheric festival 2010:

Set 1 - J-Lab Techno “Spacefunk” live set

Set 2 - IDM live set

Some more psychedelic tracks from the Artmospheric music:

Track 1 - progressive music

Track 2 - goa psy electro synth

Track 3 - India goa trance chill

Track 4 - India goa trance

Track 5 - minimal experimental ambient deep

Track 6 - psytrance

Track 7 - psytrance tribal