Posljednji ‘Traum’ ove sezone oduÅ¡evio osječku publiku ‘Dimensions Festival 2016 Launch’ spektaklom

Osijek is Croatia’s fourth largest city. Supposedly it has a population of over 100, 000, although maybe that depends on how many buses full of youths you really believe depart every week for the economic paradises of Germany or Ireland. Situated in the fertile flatlands of the Pannonian Basin, the heartland of Croatia’s agriculture and livestock region, it would be easy, by western European standards, to think of the city as a quiet backwater town, a place where the traditional life continues easily in comparison to the country’s coastal regions where tourism has its greatest impact. But, if you look hard enough, Osijek is a city that can astound you with surprises.

Within a day of arriving in Osijek you could not fail to be impressed by the quality and variety of food available in Slavonia, but it may take a little longer to find a good party. Unless you arrive on the day that Traum takes place. This is an event that could rival any domestic party in the country, a shocking example of how cultured and contemporary this city can be beneath the surface.

For people coming from outside the region this is not an easy place to find. The venue, Barutana, is described by Google Maps and even its own Facebook page as being situated somewhere near the impressive new Eurodom building on Vukovarska. Lies. After wandering like a lost sheep around park kralja Drzislava for 10 minutes searching, traditional methods turn out to be a lot more useful than unreliable online information.

Asking for directions produces various different responses. Local youths know exactly where this party space is. “It’s across the bridge”, “It’s over the rive from here” are the correct replies from any young Osjecani. A group of villagers, encountered near Tvrda, who have travelled to the big city for a Saturday night out offer a different response. “A club? Across the river? Noooo. All the clubs are here! If you want to party in Osijek you need to be here!”

It’s true that Tvrda, Osijek’s old town, does hold several of the city’s best known clubs and bars. In the main square hundreds of people sit outside bars at tables or promenade casually around in a manner recognisable to any Mediterranean or Adriatic visitor. All are enjoying the warm May evening. Their conversations are polluted by the universally awful music coming from the bars or by the revving engines of motorists passing nearby who are absolutely desperate for attention in a way that could only indicate a deficiency in the size of their penises. Pity.

In Dante’s Inferno there are nine levels of hell, but there are only two in Q Club, Osijek. The place is an ostentatious display of cleavage, muscles and vodka where proud Croatians revel to a soundtrack of mindless Serbian cajke delivered by a DJ who is so heavy handed with the effects buttons you would think he received them as a birthday gift this morning. Nearby Tufna Club is much better. It has better music, much of it in the English language.

During the short walk across the Drava a welcome breeze cools the skin. The sounds of Tvrga blow away on the wind. They are replaced by the unmistakable sounds of an underground soundsystem’s kickdrum. Descending from the bridge and approaching the venue, walking across grass from the rear, it’s impossible to guess what awaits. From the outside Barutana has regular vertical walls and a sloped roof. The first surprise of the night is that inside the roof is actually concave brick. Not only is it impressive and beautiful, providing a great backdrop to the thankfully minimal and tastefully judged lighting display, it also offers fantastic acoustics. The sound is great here, particularly the middle and top ends. It is delivered by a crisp, well balanced and not too imposing soundsystem that lies at the far end of the building where the lighting display, stage and DJ are also situated. In front of this stage is the evening’s second surprise, hundreds of visually and audibly enthusiastic ravers loosing it to the house and techno on offer.

Croatia’s capital city Zagreb has a healthy underground dance music scene, but you wouldn’t find as good a venue as this hosting it and even at the Zagreb parties with the best underground music the atmosphere can feel flat. In Zagreb you could find yourself asking stone faced ravers if they had a good night at the end of a party and the stone faced reply would be “Yes, it was great”. At Traum you don’t need to ask. It’s obvious from the big smiles, the wonky eyes, the shouts and the arms that reach for the roof that these people are having a great time These are wild scenes common to the best of Europe’s underground dance clubs, but they are scenes which are all too rare on Croatia’s domestic underground scene.

It’s difficult to explain what makes this audience so different, so special. Could it be something unpretentious, less self conscious about the nature of the people from the area? Could it be the healthy percentage of students here, some international, who attend Osijek’s many further education programmes? Could it be that they give less of a fuck? Whatever the reason, this honest display of enthusiasm makes one of the best atmospheres on Croatia’s underground scene and it’s  extremely well chosen by Dimensions Festival as a launch party.

From Zagreb’s healthy underground scene comes the evening’s first DJ, Mimi, a resident of the Ekstrakt night. He does a great job of starting the night, providing an experienced transition from non party to the full-on rave inherited by the evening’s headliner, Parisian DJ Deep, at around 2am. DJ Deep is an exciting prospect. It’s not too often an underground dance music DJ of his standing would appear in Osijek (although Francois X has visited a previous edition of Traum in this series). DJ Deep does a proficient job of maintaining the momentum to a great response from the audience, although as a DJ well known to be able to move confidently between house and techno he perhaps focusses on techno a little too much. After an exciting and more experimental start he quickly moves into the techno genre and stays there for almost all of the three hours he plays. He breaks into acid inspired house after the halfway mark, which is a nice change, but within 15 minutes he returns to techno and all of it is of a similar, contemporary type. It’s the sound of Berlin rather than Detroit, heavy on percussion and well produced, but almost always devoid of bold, memorable melodies. He plays it safe, perhaps underestimating what this audience are capable of responding to, but the techno lovers in the audience have a great time. Locals Miss Sunshine and Volster finish off the night with a much greater variety of music. Breakbeats and rave influenced sounds come excitingly into the soundtrack within 20 minutes of them starting. After three hours of similar sounding but well delivered techno their wider selections are a very welcome change.

Apart from DJ Deep’s slightly disappointing set the only other criticism of the night could be the party’s layout. With the DJ, stage and lighting rig all located at one end of the building all attention is focussed in one direction, so almost the whole audience faces the same way. You see this trend at 90% of modern DJ based club nights, but this is not how it is supposed to be. Raves are not boring rock concerts where you focus your attention on musicians and musicianship, probably via the screen of the mobile phone you record it on. A DJ playing records is rarely a very interesting thing to watch all night, certainly in the case of DJ Deep who barely dances and shows little enthusiasm. It is the DJ’s sound that is the exciting part of a rave, not what he/she looks like. After the initial impressiveness of Traum’s lighting rig fades from the mind, the most wonderful thing to see at this party, and indeed all good parties, is the amazing audience. Their smiles, enthusiasm and dancing light up the room in an endlessly inspiring way.

One dark haired young guy at the front is dancing his ass off. He might be the coolest raver at the party if he wasn’t wearing dark sunglasses in a dark club. But he definitely knows how to party properly. He turns his back on the DJ for much of the night, dancing with and smiling at his friends. This is proper raving. When approached for a quote about his behaviour he is too lost in the moment to talk. Cool. Elsewhere the crowd are more open to being spoken to by strangers. Friendly, funny and fucked people take a break near the entrance. I meet people from Osijek, some students who are based here and a guy from nearby Vukovar. Danijel has driven 50 kilometres from Popovac in Baranja to be here and another guy from a local village leaves slightly early, tired after working the whole day with bulls (note to editor – male cows). A friendly local changes some dinari for two visiting girls who have journeyed across the border from Serbia to be here. Their journey is an effort worth making for this party.

Having spent their evening around Tvrđa, by the time Jakov from Sjenjak and his friends arrive just after 5.30am, the sun is beginning to rise and the party is approaching its final hour. Jakov really likes the party, comparing it to the impressive reputation he has heard Osijek’s techno scene had in the 1990s, although by arriving so late he feels a bit detached from the vibe that everyone else has been nurturing here for hours.

Unfortunately he’ll have to wait for a few months to arrive early at the next Traum. Like Zagreb’s underground dance music scene which, for a city with a population of 800, 000, surrenders far too easily to the loss of students and the focus on the coast in summer months, Traum also takes a break in summer. Its return in the autumn will be a very welcome one.

-Marc Rowlands-