
Octoblast is one of those festivals that people in the know get quietly excited about months out. It lands in late spring on the Northland coast, it runs bass music, techno and psytrance across multiple stages, and it has built a reputation as a properly immersive weekend rather than just a lineup on a paddock.…
Every scene has its instruments. Rock had the Stratocaster, jazz had the saxophone, and rave had a pile of second hand drum machines that nobody else wanted. That is the strange and brilliant thing about dance music gear. Most of the machines that defined it were commercial flops, bought cheap by broke kids who then…

You know the feeling. You get home from a festival, peel off your coat, and it looks like it has been through a storm. The fur is flat in patches, there is a mystery stickiness on one sleeve, and the whole thing smells faintly of smoke and someone else’s night out. Here is the good…
If you have spent any time in the wellness corners of YouTube, you have met the solfeggio tones. 174 Hz for pain relief. 396 Hz to release fear. 528 Hz, the so-called love frequency, supposedly capable of repairing your DNA. Alongside them sits the 432 Hz movement, which argues that music tuned to A=432 rather…
There is a moment at every festival, usually in the early hours of the morning, when your body tells you that the last thing you ate was a $14 hot chip at 4pm the previous day. The queue for food is forty deep. Your tent is a fifteen minute walk away. You have no cash,…
You know the walk. The psytrance stage has finally let you go, the sky is doing that horrible pale thing over the pines, your legs have the structural integrity of wet noodles, and all you want is to lie down somewhere that isn’t a paddock. Then you get back to camp and it’s a dark,…
We’ve already covered the basics: raving is good for your heart, your mood and your sense of community. But what’s actually happening inside your skull when the bassline drops and you stop thinking and just move? It turns out the science of flow states, rhythmic entrainment and collective euphoria maps almost perfectly onto the rave…

If your ears have ever rung on the drive home from a gig, that was your hearing filing a complaint. Ringing ears are a sign of noise damage, and unlike a hangover, hearing damage doesn’t reset by Monday – it accumulates over every festival, club night and gig for the rest of your life. The…

Sorting womens festival outfits should be the fun part of the countdown, not a last-minute panic. Whether it’s your first festival or your fiftieth, the goal is the same: a look that feels like you, survives twelve hours of dancing, and handles everything a New Zealand summer (or winter) throws at it. This is our…

Every festival wardrobe eventually arrives at the same destination: faux fur. It starts as a practical decision – NZ nights are cold and fur is warm – and becomes an identity. The fur coat is the piece people hug you in, the landmark your crew finds you by, the thing that makes 3am on the…