Review: Defqon1 (Defqon-1) 2008

I think this party was the first hardstyle festival on a beach at daytime. I cannot recall any previous other hardstyle party where it was on daytime anyway. 40,000 squeezed in a beach…

Met some friends from London at Schiphol and travelled together to Almere. Only noticed just when everyone left the train that a temporary train station was built just for the DefQon-1 festival. Yes, a temporary station with two platforms, rail lines, a ramp and fences around it with crowd control security personnel.

We arrived around 3pm, when the party begun on 10am, so we quickly got processed in the gates for screening and off we go. Circling around this massive beach for about an hour to get ourselves being familiar to this bizzare place. Everything felt tinted yellow because of the gentle breeze washing the sand side-by-side and there were jetskis and boats patrolling the coastline for any people drowning while intoxicated.

There were ten venues all scattered on this beach:
Red: Mainstage
Silver: Industrial
Black: Hardcore
Orange: Hard Trance
Purple: Upcoming Hardstyles
Grey: Oldskool/Early Rave
Blue: Hardstyle
Green: Techno
Brown: Belgium Beats/Frenchtek

Most of these venues were held inside circus tents with the roof supported by the steel pillars. Then the speakers piled up on the pillars at the front and middle. I found it so interesting the industrial design and all. Using scrap metals such as disused metal oil barrels, car tyres and other scrap metals, all moulded together into an industrial sculpture ready to be admired by followers who were swashed in drugs.
We then approached the merchandise stand. Damn, these stuff were selling like hot pancakes. Streams of people lining up throughout the day purchasing from hoodies, to flip-flop sandles, caps, DJ deck mats, keyrings, jackets, shirts and so forth. I came back to this stand and people were still queuing up about 10pm purchasing them. It goes to show that Q-Dance made this remarkable brand movement almost to a point of cult-figure.

The main stage was way at the Western edge of the beach. The stage was 20 storeys high piled with massive amounts of oil barrels and alike with speakers on either end. No point of turning the lights on in the middle of daytime…until about 10.20pm when the sun finally descends down.

There is a ferris wheel at the rear making a full rotation in every 4min.

The deck

The tower of mischievous

The sides

Is it just my observation or is Zany getting more chubby on his every appearance in parties? I remember he was lanky a few years back…

Playful lots under the sun…

Let’s not mention about the trash we dump ay? Once i got my jeans soaked by a bloke behind me with beer. In this weather, my jeans got dried up in a few hours. Life goes on…

Smoke, smoke smoke!

The orange stage, aka Hard trance

Met some blokes who were going on a Contiki tour around Europe. Will be back for Sensation Black…

…and here is the Purple venue, aka Upcoming Hardstyle

How dandy

This is the hardcore stage

Making a blockbuster for the upcoming DefQon-1 DVD

Over-exaggerated speakers…

So how do we dance in the beach you say? All tents are sitting above a wooden platform connected with wooden walkways all connected up. Yeah, it’s impossible to dance in sand…and i would not bother trying…

High octane chicks selling bikes

It literally costs a leg to dance endlessly… Just bringing a spare leg for insurance purposes

Wazzup you say?

Almost sunset

Sculpture by the sea

Nice towering arsenals

That’s all folks!

Here are some scanned papers:

Map of the beach with venues, etc

DJ Schedules for each venues

Just two more essays

I have just two more essays to complete and i’ll be set to start my European holiday.
– EU Law
– Global Poverty

These essays are not that difficult, but it takes effort to research and concisely express it in a small essay.

I’m also in the middle of packing my belongings and start shipping them to Sydney because it will take up to 2 months to be delivered.

Almost finished…

It’s almost June, which means classes and assessments will be wrapped up. I will be over-joyed that now i can muck around, but also saddened that my experience in Amsterdam will be concluded very soon.

I will go back to Sydney at the end of July. I wish i stayed here for another 6 more months and experience the Winter again.

Since that departure is ever getting closer, i will soon have to prepare myself to be organised, such as packing boxes to be shipped back and saying goodbye to friends.

Personally, i don’t feel ready to go back. I have another semester to go and probably do my post-graduate. Living in Amsterdam felt like a year of holiday, but with pay.

It’s Spring in Amsterdam

I’ve been pretty busy lately because of photography, training and university commitments. These are some snapshots of what i have taken over the last few weeks. Enjoy! For a more comprehensive look at my galleries, check out the albums listed on the right column.

Citymoves in Alkmaar

Along the River IJ

The Overcast

Westerpark

Canals & Alfresco

Leiden’s Queen’s Day

Review: Citymoves Leiden feat. Armin Van Buuren & Markus Schulz

What a long day it was. Celebrating Queen’s Day on two cities packed with events.

I spent my early midday in Amsterdam strolling around the pedestrian streets and malls which were lined with second hand stalls and temporary kiosks. I headed towards the city centre as i usually do by Haarlemmerstraat. Instead of being congested with bikes and cars, it was the pedestrians has taken over the street even if most of the retailers on usual days were closed on yesterday’s public holiday.

The Dutch were in orange invading the city centre with its bright hats, shirts, wigs, balloons and bags; pretty much any material they can get their hands on that day. I didn’t wear anything orange ‘coz i don’t have anything in my closet. But the closest thing to getting an orange ‘fanfare’ was a can of fanta at my disposal after my quick meal i bought in Chinatown.

I left Amsterdam around 1.30PM to travel to Leiden for a party i was excited to attend. It was called Citymoves and it was a free outdoor festival well known DJs such as Armin Van Buuren, Jimmy E and Markus Schulz. It is quite rare for these international DJs to play for free on a public holiday. But what made this city special was that it is Armin’s home town. He was born here, grew up here and probably went to uni here when he studied law.

The party started at 2PM and it went on till 10PM.

ElSandro 14:00 – 15:00
Erick E 15:00 – 16:30
Blake Jarrell 16:30 – 18:00
Armin van Buuren 18:00 – 20:30
Markus Schulz 20:30 – 22:00

The festival filled up quite quickly and the locals pretty much embraced the festivities. Parents with kids, the teenagers, uni students, the yuppies and curious people all arrived in the town centre. I only found this party when i thought ‘there has to be trance DJs in Holland playing on Queen’s Day. So i surfed the net in every possible Dutch DJs i know and found out that Armin was playing in Leiden for free.

The festival itself was small, around 10,000 crammed inside the fenced up perimeter sheltering themselves from a temporary circus tent shaped white net in case of sudden burst of heaven precipitating onto the army in orange. Ahh yes, the heaven’s were not kind to us. There were instances of rain and at that split moment, people crammed under the net to an already crowded place. Some braved the rain with their hoodies on and others didn’t care at all and would not dare it to spoil their special fun.

This is my 7th time i saw Armin Van Buuren and 4th in Holland. But by far that Armin came to be so emotional. He was cheering for an unusually small crowd all chanting his name, sticking their hands out some women wide on top of their boyfriends to get Armin’s attention.

He grasped his headphone on his hand and sticked his arm up high and on many occasions bowed to the cheering crowd who has done so much to him.

Erik E

Markus Schulz

Antwerp

Spend my daytime in Antwerp before heading to Sensation Black.

Review: Sensation Black Antwerp 2008

Summary
It was no doubt a sensational night. Never felt that exuberance and energetic crowd in this party over the years i have been to dance parties. The thrill that the crowds and how participating in the sombre moments throughout the night. It was a well choreographed party with DJs having great fun in mixing their well planned sets to show off their utilities to the crowds. The party with no expenses conserved.

Travel
I travelled early to Antwerp as i was prepared to take some photos in the city. So i left my place around 8.10AM and caught the first available InterCity train to Antwerp which was 8.56AM. Arrived 2 hours later.

Most of the time i was relaxing under the sun at the state park in city centre.

Beginning
About 400 were behind me when i arrived at the entrance. All eager and dressed in totally black, from face paintings right to the jeans. There were French, Germans, Dutch and English all yattling away before the party and greeting each other.

Once the entrance was open which was about 9.15PM people filed into rows filtering through the 6 laned fenced-up gates knowing that we’ll be body searched for any traces of weapons or inflammable liquids. The security did a very basic searching…just the jeans. Then our ticket’s barcode got scanned.

The next gate was for the free magazine. Most got their ID out with the small chip embedded to be scanned and be sent a free mag. I don’t have that Belgian national ID.

The Party
It took the party a while to begin. I think the intention was to fill the dancefloor significantly before turning all the lights.

Okay, here are some pics.

Just before the show started. Empty dancefloor. It went completely packed around midnight, but the door opened more than 2 hours before.

DJ Ghost mixing. The first DJ for the night. He played hard-electro.

Ripped the seats off to make way for dance area.

Quad-pod legs at the stage.

The MC

The big screen at each end of the venue with a pair of lanterns.

The white leg. I counted at least 7 giant 5m speakers.

When Showtek was playing.

The crowd. About 30,000

The seating platform. You can see the tree branches spreading over the dancefloor.

The MC again. Cheering the crowd up.

Ladies with tommy hat

Lighting of the torch

Lady Dana in revolving big screens

The inflated tree branches above

When gabber tunes were on…

Gabber addicts tuning in

All in Black

Heaps to clean up

The aggressive Neophyte and his gabber

You can check out my gallery HERE for the remaining photos.

Interior Design and Technical
The best speaker system i have ever heard. The sound was crisp and they didn’t crank up the volume to the max. I think it’s got to do with EU regulation. There were about 7 loudspeakers suspended around the quad-pods. And the interior of the stage revolves around with its 4 big screens intact. Then there are inflatted tree branches over-bearing the whole dance-arena loosely wrapped with black streamers. It is the first venue where it utilised the seating areas by removing the seats altogether and let dancers enjoy panoramic views while the interior gets lashed with laser arsonals, flame-throwers, water-jets and fireworks.

Music
DJ Ghost was the first performer with his often-cliche remixed tune and then making it to hard-electro. Showtek and Donkey Rollers were pretty good. Donkey Roller was predictable like any of how previous performances. Showtek really did set the edge by making his tunes more theatrical. Dana was under-performing just like in In Qontrol party last week. She doesn’t know how to scratch and the crowd began to disperse at the second half of her set. Promo and Neophyte should have played an hour earlier because almost all of the crowd were pretty much exhausted and not ready for gabber tunes. In my opinion, and expressly viewed by many at that night, Dana should be the last DJ to play and let Promo and Neophyte play before her. Dana does play softer compared to the rest of hardstyle DJs, which would be better so that the crowd don’t have to dance that intensively.

Videos

Introducing Ghost

Introducing Dark-E

Coast2Coast – Home

Donkey Rollers

Black Identity

I’ll post more videos as i upload it.