Over its 19 years, Caprices Festival has become established as having some of the maddest afterparties of any festival. With the week in the Swiss Alps being a long period of high pressure for artists and event organisers alike it is time to relax and let their hair down a bit. For some this is also a chance for touring artists to reconnect with old friends and forge new friendships. Ahead of their April edition we speak to some of the regular artists and industry professionals about their most memorable afterparty stories over the years.
Giorgio Maulini
Around 4 years ago I decided to get bit more organized with our afters, so we prepared the living room and took some furniture out of the Chalet to make more space for our guests to dance. I started talking about the afters to Max (festival director) and Aminata (Artistic Director) who had her birthday that same day. We all thought we were going to be like 50 people… but it turned out to be more than 350people! The place was absolutely packed…there were people in the bathrooms, kitchen, bedrooms, absolutely everywhere! There were so many people that we decided to make everyone leave the house and let them come in again so we made sure it was just the people who were really invited haha, in the end we decided we had to do another stage in the garage so we could split the crowd and have a bit more space to dance in the living room! That one was legendary. We managed to a B2B2B2B2B all night long with Archie Hamilton, Djebali, Alci, Dan Ghenacia, Dyed, myself and others until I don’t even know what time the next day.
Tracy Bakala (Yoyaku Records)
I have a few stories, for me the afters at Caprices Festival are the best because the industry workers / artists are more relaxed and can let their hair down. One year we were doing an afters at one of the chalets, whilst in there it started to snow very very heavily, there were around 80-100 people at this afters and we all became stuck in the chalet, it was too dangerous for people to leave and the taxi’s / transport were unable to drive and get anybody…So of course we took this excuse to create an extended and very long afters, Villalobos and his crew were there, Guillame & the Coutu Dumont, Alci, James Mc hale to name a few, and in the end I think like 40 people had to just keep cracking on till it was safe to leave. There was also another hilarious time when we were taking the cable cars down from the Modernity Stage to head over to the afters carrying down all the leftover booze from the festival in 2 separate cable cars, because we were the last ones to leave the festival they stopped the cable cars thinking that everybody had vacated! So, we were stuck in there hanging over the mountain for almost an hour with all this booze…so of course we decided to have our own afters in the cable car until somebody came back to send us down to the bottom
Archie Hamilton
‘Yes, that year was a legendary after party! I had a wicked few hours on the decks with Amir Javasoul’
Mathew Jonson
One early Monday morning once the Caprices staff had finished work we decided to have our own private after party. We could dance a bit and chill outside surrounded by the beautiful Swiss alps. The sun shining through the windows of the wooden chalet and reflecting off everyone….it really felt magical. I think I played for 5 or 6 hours whilst everyone just kind of did their own things; it was the end of a very long weekend. We followed with an amazing raclette while sitting out on the porch taking in the nature. Feeling satisfied by the food it was finally the moment that we could all find a cozy place to sleep
James McHale
Might be 5 or so years ago, there was this chalet after party on Sunday, so basically the last day of the festival we always celebrate Aminata’s birthday (the artistic director for Caprices). Not sure if there was a line up as such, but at the end, there was like 5-7 DJs who were playing at the festival that ended up staying out for the whole weekend, I think it was Archie Hamilton, Guti, Giorgio Maulini, Djebali, Alci and myself. So, at the end we all played together b2b2b2b2b2b2 for ages, we kept on going even though the afters had officially finished, us DJs eventually got kicked out (in a friendly way). Yes, the Chalet afters on the Sunday are always one for the books, can’t wait for the next one!
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