- It was raining when I crossed the border into Lithuania last Friday. It was also raining on the way back two days later. Despite the grey skies, for almost the entire six-hour bus ride from southwestern Estonia, the landscape was a lush green, the colour only enriched by looming storm clouds. The final 100km leg by car from Vilnius finished with a bumpy off-road trail through thick forest, eventually arriving deep inside Aukštaitija National Park.
Festivals like Supynes are a rarity. Incredibly remote, exceptionally organised and full of quality local talent, this four-day Lithuanian party is one of only a few such events dotted around the world. The only festival I've attended that's anything like it was Subsonic in Australia. Like Subsonic, Supynes took place deep in the countryside, accessible only by narrow, winding roads. Their striking locations were coupled with the organisers' fine attention to detail, with pristine sound and a considered approach to virtually every logistical detail.
This year was the ninth edition of Supynes. The festival was founded by Nerijus Damashn and is run by a small, dedicated team of Lithuanians. It began as a small techno party, but now welcomes around 4,000 people each year and features all the usual sounds you'd find at a mid-sized dance music festival. Everything about it oozes minimalist class. At the festival site, well-designed signage is limited to what's strictly necessary, all the way down to the stage names—More, Less, Low and High. Save for a few bar awnings, there's none of the alcohol or media branding that so often plasters festival stages—instead, water, pine trees and thick scrub dominate the view. Damashn and his team have taken what they call a less-is-more approach. The atmosphere at Supynes is clearly better for it.
I spent most of my time at the More and Less stages, and hardly heard a bad track all weekend. While there were some internationals—Sven Weisemann, Fred P and Laurel Halo on Friday, Shifted & Sigha on Saturday—it was slick house and techno from the locals that generally received the best reactions. Deeper sounds characterised much of the weekend's music, so much so that anything too over-the-top from the guests seemed out of place. On Friday, Sven Weisemann's fader mashing felt cheesy compared to the driving techno of Lithuanians Mantas T and Endie & Kameu, who kept an energetic crowd at the bottom of the More stage until the 6 AM close. The next night, Shifted & Sigha opened the same way they would a peak-time set at Awakenings—white noise and big breakdowns—and didn't get the reaction they would have elsewhere. Eventually they moved into more subtle and loopier territory, which was enthusiastically welcomed. Sigha stole the show with his mixing, mechanically cutting and layering tracks over each other to devastating effect (a bouncy drum track underneath Regis's "Speak To Me" made for one of the best mixes I've ever heard).
The crowd at Supynes is a loyal one. It's almost exclusively Lithuanian (I barley heard English or any other language all weekend), and almost everyone I spoke with had been multiple times. After almost ten years, Damashn and his team are looking to market their festival internationally. With a setup like theirs, this should be an easy task. Thanks to their well-thought-out approach over the past decade, Supynes now has all the hallmarks of a world-class festival. I'm just glad I checked it out while it was still one of Europe's best-kept secrets.
Photo credits: Gytis Vidžiūnas ("Less," lake crew), Domantas Kvedaras (Shifted & Sigha)