Electronic meets rock, scream the organisers of the 15th Melt! Festival, with a line up that reads like a music blogger’s playlist. Held at Ferropolis, an open air museum for huge machines in Germany, the festival is renowned for delivering filthy beats to a crowd that has increased tenfold since its conception.
The ‘City of Iron’ creates an industrial stomping ground. From concrete pillars loom iron cranes some 1980 tonnes and 30 metres high. At day the venue seamlessly merges into grey skies. But at nightfall, the disused coal mine is dressed for the occasion. Cranes became chameleons of colour, while surges of flames burst from giant mechanical arms.
Melt! Festival is striving to overthrow its reputation as a hipster festival. The increasing steer of its line up towards harder, faster acts set to appeal to the discerning party purist. It seems to have worked.
Dedicated dancers throw shapes that wouldn’t look out of place in a boxing ring. Coupled with bare chested gurners storming through the crowd to get closer to the bass, a trip to the bar was akin to the Gladiators’ gauntlet. Not to mention that much of our weekend was spent playing eye-spy the best bass face.
Friday night started with a collision of synth pop from Disclosure, indie rock’n’roll from London’s The Vaccines and the dreamy uplifting melodies of M83, who left us humming the devastatingly catchy Midnight City the next day. Only to be competed by the gentle mutterings of “she can stay’, the chorus lyrics from Caribou’s Odessa, which saw in midnight.
After a two-year hiatus, Bloc Party continued a series of gig dates across the festival circuit. Airing material from the new album Four, the crowd bobbed patiently, but it was still the uplifting classics from their debut that initiated the frenzied response. As they bounced from Song for Clay into the opening rift of Banquet, there was a simultaneous roar as the crowd devolved into a multi-thousand moshpit. The response deemed the decision to crown their new track Octobus the official Melt! festival song for 2012 a worthy decision.
Sadly, we did not leave the dismal British summer as we left home soil. Two brand new bikinis bought especially for the advertised “swimming in the lake” came home still adorning their labels. “Sun, sun, sun” DJ Dan Snaith begged into the microphone. His wish was not commanded. Though his rapt audience with faces slick with rain and sweat did not care. The weather could not extinguish their party spirit.
This is a festival without frills. Square arenas with tarmac floors surrounded by concrete steps. The layout “does what it says on the tin”; bars signposted by the banner ‘Drinks’, identical arenas where you can dance and campsites bare of anything but portaloos for rest. A mid morning stroll from the campsite to hunt down some mischief saw our group stumble across a Bratwürste van in a Skoda showroom by a dual carriage way. Even the lure of its €2 beer could not tempt us to stay. It felt like we had taken a holiday to the Watford Gap.
Our fellow German hosts lived up to their efficient stereotype. Their camps came equipped with mini marquees staging DJ tables with Technics decks and speaker systems, while out of electric coolers people pulled pre-marinated steaks for their freestanding BBQs. And not a Pot Noodle in sight.
Though having headed to bed in the early hours on the first night to avoid the worst of the rain, the sound of generators rumbling into action at 8am in the morning soon soured our admiration.
French DJ, producer and household classic of dance, Laurent Garnier, had the Saturday sunrise slot for his new project LBS, featuring Scan X & Benjamin Rippert. Self-defined as “open-minded” towards genre, they slipped seamlessly from Balearic house to uplifting trance to driving techno with a bit of disco thrown in for good measure. After seemingly endless pounding on concrete, the soft grass underfoot at the lakeside stage was a welcome change. As the sun finally began to shine, the repeated tease of Donna Summer’s ‘I Feel Love’, brought smiles all round. This is what we came for.
On Sunday, Justice was a highlight. The crowd packed so thick that moves were restricted to bouncing up and down as a collective. A sudden break in the set caused everyone to panic - “Over already? But they haven’t played…”. Then they dropped their anthem and the crowd erupted, with every person singing along with hands in the air. In that moment, we were all their friends.
There was music round the clock at the eponymously named Sleepless stage, the place for festival goers craving repetitive beats through dawn. Dance you would, almost forced to with areas surrounding the dancefloor strewn with jagged rocks that punished you for sitting down.
By the early hours of Monday, the endless shades of grey concrete had taken its toll. The 30 minute walk back to the campsite a far from tempting proposition. This festival had been one-dimensional. Hard beats, danced to on hard floors by a hardened crowd. Although superb musically it had left nothing to the imagination. There were no magical adventures or kooky corners to explore. Just a series of top notch gigs that left us wanting more.
Published on 24 July 2012 by Kathleen
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