MOB mentality
Music On Board (MOB); South America’s most rave-friendly cruise...
What’s big, floats on water and carries 2,400 dance music-obsessed Brazilians? Nope, Green Valley hasn’t been swallowed whole by a blue whale. This March, a cruise liner named Vision Of The Seas will set sail from Santos, Brazil, armed to the teeth with a killer soundsystem, LED panels, CO2 cannons and some of the finest DJs ever to set foot on South American soil.
Booka Shade, Phonique, Lee Foss (& Ali Love), Lovebirds and Jonathan Ulysses are just a few of the names confirmed for MOB (Music On Board), a festival on a cruise ship, in its fifth year, offering enough underground talent to impress even the more cynical of dance music lovers, despite originating from a club scene more synonymous with lists and bottles than its engagement with subterranean music.
Of course, the big names will be represented too. Previous events, three of which took place on 1,700-capacity liner Island Escape between 2007 and 2009, witnessed Fedde Le Grand, Above & Beyond and Gareth Emery supplying the beats. While this year, Kaskade, the biggest on this bill, will join a plethora of homegrown DJs and producers, including Life Is A Loop, Mario Fischetti and Rodrigo Viera, to help decimate the two dancefloors on board Vision Of The Sea — one by the pool; the other in the atrium.
“It’s a unique festival in the middle of the ocean, blessed by the sun or by a full moon, with non-stop music for people who love to party,” says Jujaba. “It’s a place that’s hard to describe. You must be there to feel it and to understand it. And once you are there, you will never want to leave.”
Taking place between 9th - 12th March on a lavish boat holding two swimming pools, six jacuzzis and a range of fitness facilities for any raver who fancies a break from the never-ending barrage of beats and basslines, MOB will also stop on a private island on Saturday, where classy Berlin-based producer Lovebirds will play a blissed-out house set on a white sandy beach at sunset that promises Balearic beats with a Brazilian twist.
“One other thing that makes it very special is definitely the vibe,” he says. “Brazil is a very friendly country, and the energy of the people is unique. Brazilians are beautiful, happy people who know how to have fun.”