We haphazardly flew into Mexico City after an exhausting week on fumes and with empty tanks, two wide-eyed gringos excited about the tale of Ometeotl, a festival a couple hours south of Mexico City, deep in the jungle heart of Cuernavaca. I’ve traveled Mexico extensively, but this was another experience altogether. Our new friends Kleiman, Flower, Mariano, Rene, Alejandro, Aaron, Vane, Mark, Irela, Anita, Adriana, Carol, y Vanesa… they were like spirit guides in our new world. They did not know how much we needed this.
The artist hospitality was like some Dionysian tale, expertly actuated in a sanctuary filled to the brim with flora and fauna intertwined amongst honeycombed walls and cavernous tombs as if we hadn’t flown for hours, but eras.
We found ourselves deep in a lush cenote-esque home for the weekend, expertly crafted by the most generous of hosts. The changitos reminded us of our baser needs and the macau, they reminded us of our unmet potential. We were flying high as these birds but staying grounded. It was poignant and appropriate. It was deliberate. And delightful.
We found ourselves laughing hysterically, poolside with new friends from other corners of the world, languages bleeding into each other – the si’s becoming sim’s becoming oui’s as if English, Spanish, Portuguese, and French could coexist in a beautifully poetic tapestry of intention where everything is understood. Even German. Let’s not forget about our perfectly timed and always prepared Germans.
Which brings me to Carbon. He may be the most consistently reliable man right out of the gate that I have ever met.
Without spending unnecessary time and words on an inconsequential matter, suffice to say that he is a true friend that looks out for you no matter what the cost because that’s just who he is at his core. I was already a fan of him as an epically prolific producer, but to truly bear witness to the legend I had only known digitally before, was probably the most important connection from this entire event. The world needs more people like Carbon. Incredibly talented. True to the word. Proficient to the sound. And a gentleman when it all goes haywire. If anyone deserves respect, it’s the man that earns it, wields it, and never wavers.
And of course, the lady of the hour, Crescendoll. I’ve never seen the Hellfire Queen so cooly confident and comfortable on stage.
Ometeotl has built a place, a vibe, a community, already supportive of this beautifully dark innovation of sound, that she eased upon her throne as if it were her own. Like the 2 gods of this land, there are 2 sides to each experience. Light and Dark.
Crescendoll’s exquisite tracks set the place ablaze, fires roaring through the scores of time. Each moment was an opportunity to congregate and appreciate all that had been done, Dark and Light coexisting in a beautifully helixed journey through the psychedelic corners of imagination and delirium.
Whether you were connecting to the earth beneath you, the person beside you, the sky above you, or the source within you, Crescendoll expertly crafted a mass hallucination worthy of the greatest Oddysian epics.
And from this space, we emerged unto the rest of Ometeotl, much like the implicit deistic duality. Two sides of the same coin. Two worlds. Two stages. Intertwined. From the well thought out downtempo tonal invitation of night one to the potent worldly vibes poppin off the next day, with highlights like the irrefutably powerful Sangre Maiz exuding authenticity in a world typically devoid of exactly this…
Ometeotl consistently proves that it has its finger on the pulse of novelty and genuine artistic expression in a way that doesn’t risk its integrity.
While the diversity of the secondary stage is allowed to bloom eccentrically, the main stage is a testament to true psy artistry. Standing in the face of that Aztec wall of light and sound is synonymous with gnosis in the most purest of senses. And with that in mind, we danced into the wee hours when the dusk meets the dawn and the sacred makes itself known, while the sexiest flown F1 system hovered in parallel with our proficient new friends. The carefully crafted stage design and otherworldly projection mapping only added to the rabbit hole experience this crew has expertly cultivated. Time is but a reminder of our own fatalism. But if it’s all going to end, this is where I’d like to be buried. Thank you Kleiman and all of the Ometeotl family for creating something so pure of heart and intention.
“Estamos unidos en la tierra así como en el cielo, en la mente y en el corazón de la humanidad, y en el ruido y el silencio que reverberan para siempre dentro de nuestro ser. Somos Ometeotl.”
