Last Saturday was my 33rd birthday. It was also a super beautiful day here in Helsinki and the date for the annual Pacifique electronic music fiesta in Serena waterpark in Espoo. We celebrated the birthday with some 20 close friends travelling, eating, drinking, dancing, laughing and swimming together all day and night long.

Unity isn’t officially producing the event anymore as such but I’m still the “music director” of Pacifque. So planning the line-up and schedules is on my responsibility. Feel free to give suggestions for future events;) I think this year’s program seemed to be one of the most solid ones so far. Maybe it’s also that DJs and artists know the event too but it felt that everybody were part of a bigger story flowing smoothly from the chilled out beginning to the hedonistic ending. There’s been long discussion whether there should be some “harder” music in the main arena, but personally I think house music fits the surroundings perfectly. In Finland there are also so rarely “big” events with house in the main room that I think we’ll continue building on that tradition.

I didn’t catch all the artists and didn’t hear a bad word from anyone, but Käpä & Anselmi with their summery house, Unity Collective with their balearic nu-disco sound and Uke in sauna playing KLF’s sublime ‘Chill Out’ album in it’s 45 minute entity (if it ain’t broke why fix it?!) all definitely hit the right notes. The headliner – legendary Danny Rampling – took the crowd and was as rock solid as you can expect from someone who has DJed over 25 years and written a book on how to do it.

I played the last 90 minutes together with Mr.A and Heikki L as “Pacifique Allstars”. The last moments at main pool are always special with perhaps one of the most special DJ booth views I’ve experienced. This year’s set was eclectic selection of various forms of house music. Hessu and Ana are true masters of the genre so it’s always a pleasure to play with them. Some personal highlights from the set included Heikki’s new (yet unfinished) version of Klatsch’s classic ‘God Save The Queer’, Afrojack’s dirty-as-hell-yet-summery-in-some-weird-way ‘Pacha On Acid’ and Axwell & Dirty South’s remix of Temper Trap’s ‘Sweet Disposition’ which is already a modern classic. My alltime favorite summer track Planet Funk’s ‘Chase The Sun’ seemed to summarize the sunshine filled vibes nicely in the end.

This year it was also nice to see the production taking (once again) steps into even more solid direction. Huge thanks to all the tens and hundreds of people who were working the during the weekend. Conditions don’t get much more extreme than that so big respect to all technical/security/bar/decoration/medical/production making it all possible! Only clearly negative change I noticed was the increased amount of chlorine in the water which made my eyes hurt and all red in matter of minutes in pool area. I understood that the intention is to make the water more clear but we know where the shit goes from the water with chlorine: the to the air. And if I could choose between someone peeing on my arm or into my eye… well it’s not a tough choice! ;)

Sooo… once again we had a magical event with some 1500+ enthusiastic music lovers. This will help us finns to make it to the summer months with more good memories and stories to be told. To keep them fresh we can always go to SESSIONS2 website and relive the moments once more. Thank you and see you again in 2011!