The music....
At some festivals, the main stage is a sideshow. You glimpse it in passing, unable to get off the train of punters going ... somewhere. There's no point in stopping, you've just missed the act you wanted to see anyway. At other festivals, there's nothing to do but stand in front of the big stage all day.
	The Brix Chill struck the perfect balance. If you felt a crowd wouldn't disturb your equilibrium, there were some wicked bands playing in front of an up for it bunch of people - the Tao is in all things, even bass bins and glowsticks - and you could just wander over and join them without planning a safe route in and out hours in advance. Or you could do a hundred and one other things instead. Like it said on the tin, chilled.
And so, having carefully considered our options over an early evening coffee and spliff, it came to pass that myself (iced mocha), Commander Mikey (triple espresso) and our 300lb Samoan photographer (filter) decided to spend our Saturday evening avin' it extremely large in a mass experience bordering, or so we profoundly hoped, on hysteria.
	We weren't to be disappointed. We arrived in time to catch the end of a typically wonderful set by [Lego] System 7 led by Steve Hillage, whose Damascene conversion to Lego after spending the 70s in archetypal Sticklebrick band Prong just served to endear him to a crowd who were well aware of his past. Finishing with the tsunami-like Alpha Wave, [L]S7 gave up the stage to a DJ set by Plastikman who opened with his own remix of the same track. Heaven.
Commander Mikey, who had wandered off in search of stimulants, returned with a huge grin on his face, a salt shaker full of yellow peril and ten hits of PVC. Our Samoan photographer grabbed five of the hits and left, mumbling something about work to be done. We caught only one brief glimpse of him in the next few hours, halfway up a tree in search of the perfect angle. I strongly suspected no climbing had been involved in reaching that position.
	Meanwhile, Mikey and I wandered through the sea of dancing and smiling people, our own grins rising ever higher as the contents of the salt shaker went down. As Plastikman's set came to a close, we found a prime position to watch the final act, Brix favourites and sometime Coldsnap collaborators Extrastatic.
Extrastatic's music is marvellous but the projections which accompany their shows are even better. A mixture of computer animation and "found" video jockeying, the visuals integrate seamlessly with the sounds leaving the audience simultaneously slack-jawed and screaming for more. They tap into our collective childhood fantasies of space missions, Ninja battles and brightly coloured toys and make us dance to them till plastic fatigue sets in.
	Of course they hadn't counted on the fortifying powers of PVC and the end of their set found The Commander and I still wanting more. We decided to investigate the action backstage. Skipping past security - the old "We're on a mission from God" line worked surprisingly easily - we found ourselves in the hedonistic world of ...
... roadies carrying flightcases. So we left again. We quickly found our photographer - expending several rolls on a particularly fascinating blade of grass - and headed over to the best sound system on site for some banging trance and acid techno.
	My recollection of the night is somewhat unreliable from this point on although I distinctly remember our Samoan companion, dressed in full length waders and a hat covered in flies, expounding on the joys of shark fishing to an enthralled audience; and Commander Mikey being driven to the point of distraction by the barking of the elephant seals which nobody else seemed to be bothered by, or indeed aware of.
We arrived back at the campsite around dawn, running across a member of Extrastatic and one of the stagedancing Lucies on the way back. They seemed to be having as enjoyable a Saturday night as we were, although admittedly a somewhat less wayward one. That moment summed up the spirit of the Brix festival for me. Sunday was spent chilling, as it should be.
... with profound apologies to HST ...