Festival Nrmal, Part 2: Chipinique

Picture by Giovanni Guillén

by ADRIAN MATA-ANAYA

For the worst, I was mostly alone on Friday night. I used Gomez as a yuppie pit stop, grabbed a veggie burger, and was eating in the dark, when a grayscale Gepe crossed my path. God willing, a good omen. After scrambling onto the three-stop shuttle, I embarked on the first of two thirty-minute sit-abouts. I had wanted to pop in at Sergio's, a mung, dimly-lit front, featuring some trans-locals, including Husky and Little Ethiopia. But stopping meant missing Zutzut and Vampire Slayer. Right as we left for the hills, Todd P ran after the bus, made us stop, and guided Trash Talk on the bus. For the remainder of the weekend, the DIY promoter, half of the festival music direction, could be found herding his flock of North American-plus transgressives.

Onto the third venue, we left for another sitcomic thirty. Some hunchy punks on a little spiked punch rambled about a sort of secret contract option: a two-day extension for visiting musicians with a curated peyote horse-riding excursion. A reunited couple babbled about the Babylonic enslavement of the populous through fear, and a lady holding onto her empty beer and a full bladder, danced on her seat in a lunar cycle, reaching a full moon of intensity as we got to the venue. I hope she didn't piss herself.

With Festival Nrmal's vision and professional preparation, I made it to Extasis/Finesse showcase at Chipinque in Monterrey, Mexico from Texas. But don't worry, Austin, I immediately kept it hella weird, y'all. I danced alone in line, stared into the ground during Zutzut's set, and spent thirty minutes on a secluded rooftop watching Laurel Halo. The rest of the night was a rope-a-dope between people watching and music feeling. Unfortunately, the dopamine of my Ritalin had worn off, so I took to Indio beers and got high on dope cameos by DJ Smurphy, DS RE, Toy Selectah, Erik Rincon, Alexico, and Tony Gallardo, among others. The mansion's mountainous terrain, a proper Monterreño slope, created sloppy clots on the stairs between the two stages. On top of it all, I peered the panorama, trying to figure out the updated sets schedules without any visual indications. Shame on me, I missed Teen Flirt, Vampire Slayer, and Menudo Coincidencia/Tocadiscos Trez. It's become a bit hazy to who I did catch, Physical Therapy retwerked a salsa track, Lao brought the crowd an explosive boil with some radioactive numbers, while an underestimated Zutzut, went first, to close friends and some handfuls of early love birds.

When the Club Fonobros and Sista Souad made it to the rave, an emotional dam broke. I blacked out in an ecstatic happiness. Game Over.

Continue? 10! 9! 8! 7! 6! 5! 4! 3! ...

Picture by Giovanni Guillén