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Festival Fever: Motion Notion 2012

April 17, 2012

Motion Notion 2012 

Welcome back to Festival Fever, your weekly stop featuring Canada’s best and some of the world’s biggest electronic music festivals. This week we travel to the Beaverfoot Lodge in beautiful Golden, B.C. to present you Motion Notion, a yearly electronic music festival, founded by James Katalyst, which until this year was held in Drayton Valley, Alta. The festival has moved across the provincial border to a new location this year for the first time, the Beaverfoot Lodge and surrounding festival grounds will now provide the ample space required to showcase the captivating music and art deep in the heart of nature. Over the course of five days and four nights, thousands of people will converge on this beautiful property for an electrifying event.

For 11 years now, this successful event has taken place in Drayton Valley, Alta. on an enormous ranch with similar characteristics as the new location. Thousands of fans gathered every year to celebrate music, art, peace and love. With atmospheres reminiscent of the love filled sixties, the different fashions seen here will also transport you back into the hippie days. People come from far and wide in order to experience the feeling of unity this spiritual festival can provide.

“Experiencing music and art in nature helps us to feel the essence of Humanity, the Earth, and the Universe.  One sacred rhythm beats within all people and throughout the universe as a whole- this primal pulse is what I endeavor to understand and why I continue to create the Motion Notion Festival.” (James Katalyst -Event Founder and Creative Director)

The new location, Beaverfoot Lodge is one of North America’s best festival venues with hundreds of acres of beautiful pastures, untouched forests, peaking mountains and is bordered by a clear mountain river. Playing host to many large festivals every year proves this amazing property capable of successfully hosting Motion Notion and seems like an excellent location to transport the roots of the festival into. This new venue for the festival is picturesque and subtly hidden away in Canada’s captivating landscape.

This year the festival will boast two official stages, The Main Stage and The Cabana by PK Sound. Various independent stages will also be set up throughout the week. Main Stage features a 50kw PK line-array sound-system, international art display, one-of-a-kind structures and multiple visual screens with custom video-mapping. It runs 24 hours a day starting at 5 p.m. on Thursday. The Cabana, which will no doubt have unbelievable sound thanks to the renowned firm, PK sound. This fully developed stage will run from 6 p.m. until 6 a.m. every night and is where most of the funk, breaks, dub-step, drum ‘n bass and and mash ups will be found. Sponsored by PK themselves, this stage will surely impress the masses. This festival makes it possible to enjoy the outdoors while listening to an array of fantastic tunes with your fellow music-lovers, or as the festival staff would call them, ‘MoNoers’. Check out this video of the 2010 edition.

Entertainment includes fire-dancers, belly-dancers, flaggers, live-painters and many others. With daily themed events ranging from ‘Super-hero Dance Party’ to ‘Hawaiian Surfer Getdown’, the atmosphere is sure to stay positive. Yes, the focus is on electronic music, particularly psy-trance, and the parties do routinely churn along until the sun comes up the next day, but fans are treated to much more than thumping beats. With lavish multicoloured stages, interactive art installations, and daytime workshops on topics ranging from meditation and yoga to something called “interactive quantum-physics efforts,” mastermind James Katalyst has created an event that has appeal far beyond the soother and glowstick set.

The line up for the 2012 edition is yet to be released, although expect many returning artists. The line up from last year featured over 100 talented local and international artists including Infected Mushroom (Live Band & Old-School DJ-Set), Shpongle (Simon Posford DJ-Set), Neelix, Gaudi, Eoto, AN-TEN-NAE, Vibesquad, Random Rab, Electrypnose, Mad Maxx, Mat the Alien, Subvert, Soulflix, Stickybuds, Treavor Moontribe, Blue Lunar Monkey, Glitchy and Scratchy, OT-KUN, Yan and many more. The official line up will be announced before May so stay current on upcoming news and announcements on the website.

This year will be the 12^th edition and will be held from July 19 to July 23. The feel is said to be similar to that of Shambhala or Astral, where peace and good vibes are prevalant as thousands of people come together in this electronic music haven. If you don’t have your tickets yet get them on here.

Next week, we come to the last Tuesday of the month and we will be presenting you our third international edition of Festival Fever featuring Exodus. This exclusive affair in Las Vegas is run by Canada’s very own Uniq Lifestlye Group, also behind the newly announced Digital Dreams festival in Toronto over Canaday day weekened.  Come back next week to hear all about this extravagant Vegas event.

If you know of any Canadian or International electronic music festivals we should be covering, please email Stef at festivals@djmag.ca.

 

See you next week!

 

Stef Abrek