From
the word “go”, there was the true feeling
of festival spirit in the air. .A couple of miles from
the site, traffic slowed up, people left and wandered
amongst other’s cars, music blared from stereos
and there was a sense of general excitement.
Having arrived at the gates to the site,
this feeling was somewhat tarnished on discovering that
every man and his dog was in the cue to pick up press/vip
passes. One and a half hours down the line, we
were ready to move on to the next step in our journey.
Due to the site being a couple of kilometres
from the majority of the camping, the organisers provided
a bus shuttle service that ran on a regular basis to
and from the site. As part of the “privileged”
press pass holders, our camping was positioned next
to a beautiful lake, only a couple of minutes from the
thick of the action. Having walked through the
masses of tents crammed next to one another in the “normal”
camping areas, opening up our tent to a beautiful lake
was certainly a major perk.
One of the main attractions of the festival
is the extremely powerful imagery and impact of the
location. Ferropolis is an open air museum of
huge machines from the 20th Century, with some of the
machines weighing up to 2000 tonnes and reaching thirty
meters high. These machines were used extremely
effectively in conjunction with the festival by becoming
an integral part of the lighting show. Flames
were ignited and strobes put to full use to add to the
“show”.
The festival itself was split into six
main performance areas; the Converse main stage (for
the big gun headliners),. the Gemini stage (combination
of djs and bands), the Big Wheel stage (electro acts),
Melt! Klub (up and coming bands), the Red Bull Music
Academy stage (grime & hip hop) and the Sleepless
area (for those having trouble sleeping...nudge, nudge,
wink, wink!!). These stages featured acts playing
everything from electronica, dance music, pop and indie
through to ambient beats and hip hop. There was
certainly something for a wide variety of musical tastes.
So, to the musical Melt! Experience and
an extremely promising start with Caspa, one of the
dubstep scene’s biggest up and coming players
and the excitement and energy of the crowd certainly
reflected this. In fact, this genre of music seemed
to be one of the highlights of the weekend for many
festival goers and the Red Bull Music Academy stage
was full to brimming with folk, heads bopping in time,
for the majority of the weekend. Unfortunately
we only heard a few tunes from another big gun of this
music scene, DJ Skream, but heard great feedback from
various sources over the weekend. From here to
the Melt! Klub where The (International) Noise Conspiracy,
a Swedish rock and roll band with punk rock influences
certainly made a visual impact with their glam rock
costumes. Despite the copious amounts of velvet
on show, their music failed to rouse the reception that
they were probably anticipating. From Melt! Klub
to the Gemini Stage where Zoot Woman, the twelve year
old British electroclash group known for their live
shows, received a very positive response from the audience.
However, after the first few tunes it was rather a case
of heard one, heard them all. The main Converse
stage provided a platform for Deus, one of the most
successful Belgian indie rock bands ever. They
played some beautiful tunes that had us stop in our
tracks. One of the joys of a festival such as
Melt! is the diversity of music available and in this
instance from the beautiful melodies of Deus to the
uplifting electronic music of Gui Boratto and Modeselektor.
Modeselektor, the techno pranksters from Berlin, known
for their rowdy and entertaining shows, didn’t
fail to come up with the goods. Their hour of
fun and games included miming along to a remix of Bjork
and Antony Hegarty’s (of Antony and the Johnsons
fame), Dark Flame of Desire, some piss take MCing aimed
at fellow DJs and a stage full of friends and fellow
party animals dressed up in freakish costumes having
a whale of a time throwing loo rolls etc, etc.
This was met with an exuberant reaction from the crowd
that could well be expected and was certainly one of
the musical highlights of the weekend. After this
musical high, we headed across to the Gemini stage to
catch the end of Miss Kittin, the new wave/electro lady
and her partner in crime, producer pal The Hacker. The
crowd appeared to love the set and the wooden floor
was certainly taking a battering. Bookashade,
the German electrohouse duo, veterans of the Frankfurt
electronic scene, played a set of hypnotic electro,
showing their true colours as one of the masters of
subtle drops. The night was concluded with catching
some of the popular Swedish, elfin-type creature, Robyn’s
set. She delivered “With every heartbeat”,
“Who’s That Girl” and “Be Mine”
with excellent clarity and she definitely deserved her
position on the main stage.
One of the draw backs of camping so close
to the heart of the festival is that should you wish
to retire to bed before the last DJs pack up at 7am,
the chance of getting any sleep is nigh on impossible
so, after a disturbed couple of hours sleep, it was
time for day two of the musical extravaganza to begin.
Well, after a leisurely stroll back to the car to pick
up some much needed food supplies. Unfortunately,
due to the gates to the festival not opening until 3pm
and therefore the various food and drinks stalls also
not opening, a much needed coffee was not on the menu.
With a severe lack of caffeine and some extremely dark
clouds looming above us, we headed to the main stage
to catch Peter Licht, the German musician and author
drew a good crowd despite the early signs of a downpour.
Three tunes in and the heavens opened with a mighty
vengeance. The crowds flocked to any shelter they
could find and remained there for the next hour until
the rain subsided a little. It was at this juncture
that the Melt! Klub seemed like a good, dry venue to
watch the highly recommended Kakkmaddafakka and what
a great recommendation it was. This young, Norweigan,
indie pop band gave a highly energetic and humorous
performance climaxing in the whole room being persuaded
to kneel on the floor and jump up in unison. A
great achievement and a true reflection of the fact
that they had the audience eating out of the palm of
their hands. Another performance to remember!!
The next act, Rummelsnuff was a stark contrast to what
had come before. Roger Baptist, some time bouncer
at Berlin’s hip Berghain Club and some time lead
singer of Rummelsnuff could be described as somewhat
freakish in his bodybuilder stature and monotone singing/shouting
style. Their music could be described as a slightly
watered down version of Rammstein. Unfortunately
this didn’t receive a very good reception from
the audience and a previously packed Melt! Klub become
noticeably more roomy. The Klub became full to
brimming for the next act Miss Platnum, a Romanian singer/songwriter
whose uplifting music is a combination of Hip-Hop, Soul,
R&B and Pop with Romanian musical elements.
With a large dose of enthusiasm and energy, her, her
two backing singers and the brass band certainly entertained
and brought the house to full-on rapture. Unfortunately
this was to be the last musical element of the festival
for us as the rather over-zealous bouncers failed to
let my co-festival goer back into the venue after a
much needed trip to the loo, despite the flashing of
his press pass. Panic stations kicked in as there
was no way of contacting him and trying to find him
in a crowd of 20,000 festival revellers was a no-go.
This combined with the fact that I couldn’t have
been any damper meant that back to the tent it was!!!
Unfortunately we were not able to stay
for the third and final day of music shenanigans (new
to this year’s festival) due to ferry commitments.
However, the climax was Bjork playing the festival out
at 10.30pm and I hear that it was met with great reception
by the Melt! revellers.
Melt! certainly has the best ingredients
for a fantastic festival experience; an A class musical
line-up, a beautiful and dramatic setting, great sound
systems and a better lighting show than you would see
in most top class clubs. As if that wasn’t
enough, it was also superb value for money at 85 euros
for a three day pass with camping. However, as
with any festival, the one element that you can’t
control is the weather and unfortunately, in this case,
it was out to get us!! We had prepared ourselves
for a musical extravaganza to include along with the
aforementioned, the likes of Hot Chip, Alter Ego, M.A.N.D.Y.,
Goldie, Supermayer, The Notwist, Roisin Murphy, Mr.
Oizo, Technotronic, Henrik Schwarz and the Battles but
unfortunately the elements won and our musical Plan
A rather turned into Plan B or even C. It certainly
proves that the weather really does have the power to
make or break a festival. There’s always
next year……………..!!
Elspeth Maconochie
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