RELIX - The Magazine for Musicians Thursday / October 19, 2006 / Seattle, WA By Alex Anderson 6th Annual Flowmotion Summer Meltdown Whitehorse Mountain Amphitheater, Darrington, WA, August 10-13, 2006 We at Relix get some pretty sweet perks of the job—year-round festival attendance, super-secret special shows, bunches of new music, hobnobbing with musicians—and while that may sound like the sweetest job on Earth, it sometimes wears you down. (Just ask Mike Greenhaus, our intrepid pod-casting Staff Editor, who racked up close to 40,000 miles in flights in a three-month period.) So when we get the chance to unwind and take a break, we do, often at a festival we like to keep on the QT, which is why we jumped at the chance to visit our buddies from Flowmotion (Seattle, Wash.,) at the 6th installment of their homegrown Northwest festival, “Summer Meltdown,” in the shadow of White Horse Mountain, just north of Seattle. Friday dawned bright and warm, an early-morning dip in a frigid mountain stream backstage being the perfect way to shock yourself awake. A couple of standout performances during the day from TapHabit, DJ Postal and Panda Conspiracy were a prelude to a solid, funked-up, stripped-down and kicking set from the diminutive talents of Vicci Martinez out of Tacoma, WA. Whether banging out percussive acoustic melodies, or strapping on a djembe, this barefooted dervish had the crowd whipped up to a storm. The ambient jazz guitar of Bill Frisell and guests came next, a change of pace that was perhaps unwelcome by some after the manic energy of Martinez. Frisell is a legend by any measure and his original compositions led the crowd on a merry auditory trip, jazzed versions of Lucinda Williams tunes being a nice little touch. The March Fourth Marching Band closed the main stage with infectious stage antics and 35-plus members rollicking through an Afrobeat infused percussion marathon. Late-night action centered around the Boogie Dome with DJ’s spinning through the night, including an astounding set from KJ Sawka, performing a live drum and bass set without any loops or samples. Nice! Read the entire article at: Relix.com BACK TO PREVIOUS PAGE

 

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