Is it a summer song? Is it a winter song? Is it sad, is it hopeful? It could be all of that, with its slow melancholic disco pop it it has an “innate sense of longing for what could have been” (Guardian) For sure, it is a hit. Saint Lou Lou “Only You”:
Watch these girls, I am sure we will see much more of them in the future. The song is good and the story about two pretty Swedish-Australian twin sisters releasing on Kitsuné is just too good not to be caught by many, many, many magazines.
I found a great film about the evolution of dubstep and its protagonists and places. The SRK crew follow people through Croydon, the Big apple record store, the club Fwd, climb house roofs with Heny G from Anti Social Entertainment who explains how pirate radio shows work, visit Sub FM, explain the mastering process, film club nights, meet Mala, Skream, Hatcha, Kode9, Benga, N-Type, the Plastician, Mary Ann Hobbs, and many, many more. Very insightful and entertaining!
Deserted festival stages have something melancholic, yet promising about them. At daytime, without people, they look like resting giants, awaiting the night and the lights and the audience. All silent, about to be filled with life. I like that view. Here are most of the Outlook stages at daytime.
This is the main one (quite a standard festival stage).
The following are all the stages in and between the old fort. Fort1 and Mungo’s are the biggest and connected by a path on top of them. Inside the fort, there is the Courtyard, the Dungeon (inside, very small) and my favorite: Noah’s ballroom. Only a small circle, surrounded by big walls.
I did not get a good picture of the ballroom by day, so here’s one by night.
The most impressive is certainly the Moat. Situated in the old water moat around the heavy walls of the fort it is almost 100 meters long and forms an infamous tunnel of bass.
Back to the beach to enjoy the last sun beams.
All I needed now, was to get on a boat. I walked down to the harbor to try my luck. Only to see the last of four ships float away in front of me.
But no worries, I managed to convince the boat organizers that it would be extremely necessary to also report from a boat to make the festival experience complete.
I was superthankful for the courtesy to put me on a boat in the last minute, because it is actually very difficult to get on these. Apparently the official tickets sold out within 10 minutes. And many people would have loved to get on the boat I finally came on.
Take a look at the Reggae boat. It’s not the one I was on, but it’s a good impression of the steamy atmosphere there.
Boat parties in general are great. Not only because floating is nice and sun and nature and all that but from the view of the social dynamics also. You really have the chance to get to know people. Obviously, nobody can leave for several hours and the music also builds up a very intimate atmosphere.
Talking about the music: As said, I was lucky to get on the DMZ boat with Mala. Very deep and crystal sound, relaxed and intense, like made for this kind of cruise. A perfect start into a night where I should get much more of my desired style of music. On display was also Skream’s “booze cruise” but that would have been too much for me for sure.
So I danced smoothly and talked to some Swiss people, a bunch from the Netherlands, an engineering woman who designs oil platforms and last but not least the Croatian sailor who gave me his flirting advice: “You have to let the girl know that you want her!” Ok, thanks!
My next stop was the Dockside stage with the Chestplate vs Osiris night. I stayed for almost three hours and watched Kryptic Minds, Distance and Youngsta together with thousands of people and with such a clear and powerful sound that made the music literally appear in the air. Impressive. Also the amount and the excitement of the audience for musicians who probably would gather no more than 300 people or so in Berlin!
The rest of the night went on like most festival nights, strolling around, bumping into people, like the owner of the hostel I stayed in and also other people I had met the day before. It is this kind of familial feeling that makes you sad when the event is over. And despite the size of the area and about 20 000 people being there, Outlook is small enough to allow for this encounters.
I wish the organizers all the best for keeping that spirit. But I am quite confident that they will. These people know what they do and they did a really good job. The sound is superb, the light was good, although there is certainly more room for unusual ideas like this projection surface out of styrofoam which makes the stage look like a socialist building.
The securities were professional and friendly and certainly did a good job in managing the crowd in the very little floors. The only security issue were some dodgy black taxi drivers who tried to get people in their cars and apparently also attacked someone directly outside the area. So be careful there!
I also liked the food, especially the fruit salad revived my spirits friday at night! And suprisingly there was no big brand sponsoring to see, only the usual drink branding. And that’s quite cool because it makes the festival more unique and less standardized.
To put in a nutshell: Even if I missed my flight home because the boat came in too late to Venice and I am on a train to Milan to catch the last Easyjet flight to Berlin which makes about 160 EUR extra including the train ticket and even if it was an Odyssee to get there, I had a great time. I had inspiring musical moments, many conversations with new people, some sun, some rain, some meditarrenean water around my feet and the perfect little getaway I needed from Berlin.
Thank you Outlook, hvala Pula and Croatia for this weekend!
Wow. This place is amazing. And worth every minute of the odyssey it took me to get here. Remember: I wanted to visit Outlook Festival 2012 and figured out a cool way to travel from Berlin: To Venice by plane and to Pula, Croatia, by boat. Here’s what happened.
The boat ride was not at all as glamorous as I had imagined it. Instead of elegantly floating in at the harbor with a glass of Martini at hand, the boat jumped over 5 meter tall waves for three hours constantly. Almost everybody got sick on the boat including the dog. Finally in Pula, the storm and rain was immense, streets drowning in water, flashes and thunder all around. Yay, welcome to the summer festival experience!
So no more festival for me on Friday. I had checked in at a nice hostel, the Riva hostel which is directly down at the harbor and very friendly and cosy, went out to eat and fell asleep almost instantly. Saturday consisted of looking at some sites in Pula like an old Franciscan monastery, skillfully explained by a girl I had met on the boat and who happened to be a archaeologist. Great! That is the thing about travelling alone: You get to know so many people and interesting stories because you’re so open and flexible.
The hostel hosted mainly “Outlookers”. With very very dirty shoes. So I decided to get some new ones to avoid ruining mine. I chose cheap white trainers to get the most out of the upcoming dirt experience.
With a bunch of English girls, a Canadian and a Finnish guy from the hostel we took a bus and after a long walk ended up at the beach with a bar, a little reggae stage and people playing around in the water.
Wow. And here it was, the magical festival moment. I had lost my faith almost with all the rain and the hassle, but wow. I could feel the good vibes and sense a bass from far away.
To explore the site, I had some experts on my side again. Kleinski and Sesner from the Riddim Box took me under their wings and showed me around. And there was much to see. The area is huge and the festival has more than 10 stages.
During the day, there’s music by the beach and boats float around in the Mediterranean with soundsystems organized by different labels. At night there are two big stages down by the harbor, one middle sized stage in between the beach, the harbor and the fort. The fort is from the 19th century and in and around are 6 more stages. Some of them only with a capacity of 120 people which brings in a true club atmosphere. In total I would assume Outlook festival has about 20 000 visitors.
So, totally overwhelming. Great sound, great lights and crowd consisting mainly of young British bass music lovers mixed with enthusiasts from Croatia and the rest of Europe. It took a while until I started to figure out what each stage was like. I basically ran around in between floors bumping into people I had met before and just enjoyed the music. With no particular highlights I have to say. I must have seen Ben UFO, Mensah, Hyetal, Fantastic Mr Fox and Kode9 and everything was good but maybe a bit too much to digest at once. And also the constant rain got on the nerves after some hours outside. Still, I was so happy to finally being there and having made the decision for this little trip.
Getting home was another lucky encounter. I met a girl who works at the hostel I stay in and two of her friends and we were going share a taxi. But the drivers wanted to charge five times the usual price. “Bastards, that’s too expensive, I call my dad!” said one of the girls. Dad came, drove us home and I had a funny conversation about football on top. Great day, great finish. With the bass still in my head, I fell asleep.
Before I boarded the plane this morning, I took a look at the weather forecast for Pula, Croatia: rain until monday. Well, quite disappointing. But maybe the right thing to lower my expectations a bit. Which are dangerously high since I have seen and heard such great things about the “worlds best bass music festival” on a beautiful peninsula in Croatia next to the old coast town of Pula.
Now I am sitting in Venice, looking over the adriatic coast, in the sun with an espresso and it is hard to imagine that on the other side the weather could be any less good. But wait, Venice, why Venice? Well, the roads to Outlook are not really straightforward.
All flights there cost a fortune. And they already did 4 weeks ago. Some of them take longer than a day. I tried for hours to find a good combination, also to fly to Ljubiljana, Zagreb or Triest. But no. Until I took a look at the actual map and saw an intersting dotted line from the harbour of Pula: A ferry to Venice!
And that´s why I am here now, I am waiting for a ship which will take me to the other side, almost directly to the festival site. Finally, this idea of flying to Venice with Easyjet and then smoothly getting in on a boat like a sailor was tempting and also affordable enough for me to spontaneously make this decision to go and cover the Outlook festival.
So stay tuned and read more about my trip during the upcoming days.
The Devorama party was a big, packed, sweaty and joyful event. I was superhyped and excited that everything went so well and sat at the terrace with the last crew until the sun rose. The party guests showed their devotion with buying more drinks after the 30 free beer crates were gone. And of course, I took my chance to play some tunes after Symbiz had finished the energy loaded show. Here are my favorites of this quite dark dubstep set which actually made some people dance in the end.
Starting very dark and intense with Kryptic Minds – Badman VIP
Spill in some echo reggae sweetness, RSD – Kingfisher
It gets a bit funkier and people start to get it with Killawatt’s Mantra
And my highlight Distal – Booyant
I ended with more straight tunes, like Martyn and Mike Slotts All Nights
to hand over to Paula who continued with discoish tunes from the Loftus Hall
The pic up there is by Matze Hielscher, finde more party pics here!
Symbiz Sound are probably the most entertaining bass music crew in Berlin, these two guys blow your mind when they play live. They go mental on their self built controller, sing, rap, play guitar, use the siren extensively and know exactly how to play with the audience. The first time I saw them, they managed to fill an empty tent with a raging crowd over the course of 30 minutes.
Symbiz’ ragga and tropical infused dubstep is densely filled with effect sounds, interesting changes, great vocals and funny ideas. Computer games get mashed in, a polka band, ironic shouts. It’s great fun, not too serious, yet with an attitude. These guys know what they’re doing and they never seem to run out of ideas.
Here is their most recent video, “Who cares?” as a 3D version. You’ll need cyan/red glasses to see it properly. Here’s the 2D version.
Here is the making-of which shows the immense effort needed to produce this. They got support by the Technical University of Braunschweig.
To prove their live qualities watch this:
At Melt, I was so impressed that I took the chance and asked them if they wanted to play at our P3000 Devorama summer party. And they said yes! So now I am so looking forward to tomorrow when they blow the roof off the place where we usually work.
The picture is from the Juicy Beats Fb page.
After Splash festival, the Hiphop Open in Stuttgart is the second hiphop festival in Germany. This year, they celebrated their tenth anniversary in beautiful weather. Here is a nice anthem video:
HIPHOP OPEN ANTHEM from Jay 0711 on Vimeo.
And a little compilation of acts during the festival (not the greatest camera though..)
Schowi, one of the founders, member of the legendary Massive Töne, and now DJ in Berlin, did a mixtape with lots of classics which you can get on itunes
The line up speaks for itself. Claiming to be “Europe’s leading bass music and sound system festival” the Outlook festival has almost everybody there who influenced and shaped this genre over the last years: Fat Freddy’s Drop, Skream, Lee Scratch Perry, Digital Mystikz – Mala & Coki, DJ Marky, The Beatnuts, Zinc, Gold Panda, Scuba, Goldie, Kode 9, Pinch, Calibre, Addison Groove, Applebim and many, many more.
And if that wouldn’t be enough, the location looks superb: Situated on a pensinsula in the Croation Adriatic coastline in Punta Christo, Pula, in between ruins of old castles and forts and beaches. Happening from the 30th of august to the 3rd of september.
Complete line up
And if you can’t make that, same location, only a week later, also with a superb line featuring Nicolas Jaar, Moodyman, Four Tet, Little Dragon, Shackleton, Todd Terje: The Dimension festival.
Lazy sunday. My favorite day at Melt. Everybody is a bit hungover and fluffy. Movements are slower, in a common pace, people got used to each other, made friends and are a bit emotional because a great time is going to end. I got to see many, many concerts that day and in the very end had the lovely surprise to see my unexpected highlight. Here we go.
First concert: Lana del Rey. And the girl can sing! Really good and friendly, excited fans and perfect chilled music to start the last day. Pleasant surprise. Next were Freedom or Death. New discovery which I liked a lot.
Waiting in the evening sun to see Destroyer.
I was looking forward to this concert and wasn’t dissapointed. Daniel Bejar treated the microphone stand like a flamboyant walking stick. Very elegant, smooth and unexcited.
Hopping over to the sleepless to see if everything was alright in the last sunbeams. It was.
Gesaffelstein starting with some fat, slow electro disco french house smash. Ok, so party again.
Here you see a ZDF Kultur toy where every floor panel makes a different sound. Great idea but I pity the crew who had to look over it and listen to the noise for 4 days in a row.
And Justice for all. Very, very loud, but somewhat not really funky.
The Gaslamp Killer felt underemployed and jumped on stage as MC for Brodinski.
My personal Melt! highlight: Symbiz Sound celebrate a Latin infused Dubstep party at the Sneaker Freaker stand and made a spontaneous crowd jump and sing. People just came along and stopped, being dragged into the show by these great entertainers. They deserve a big stage!
And that’s it. A tired mainstage covered with the leftovers from the last days.
Thanks for a great festival again!