First a quick reminder of what Dunk!festival really is; it’s a three day festival in Belgium that celebrates post-rock and instrumental music. Olli and I have been taking a nose dive in the wonderful world of post-rock in the past two years or so. I’ve been a fan of Explosions In The Sky since 2005 but it wasn’t until much later that I realized that hey, this genre might have some more great bands in it (!).

And from there on I gravitated towards bands I’ve grown to love fiercely in the past year, like God Is An Astronaut and Kaneda. The former, by the way, was headliner of Dunk last year, which was what tipped me off about the awesomeness that takes place in Zottegem every year. I kind felt bummed about not going – because GIAA is topping my list of my ‘I must see this dammit’ list. Fucking figures that they were in the Netherlands just when we were in the UK last November.

Anyway, through last.fm I kept an eye on the line up, and when both Pelican and Steak Number Eight were confirmed Olli and I thwarted our not-festival-plans that we had this year and bought tickets anyway. Unfortunately none of the other festival group goers could/wanted to go with us, but they should be hanging their heads in disappointment now. I am sooooo glad we went. It was beautiful and I can recommend it to everyone! Good beer, no security, extremely relaxed atmosphere, and three full days of music. We saw 18 bands and discovered so much great music… it was beautiful.

Friday
Olli and I left Nuttyville late and got into a lot of trafficjams, so unfortunately we weren’t in Zottegem (near Ghent) until 5.30pm. Our room was all ready and nice, though. The owners of the B&B were nice enough and the room was comfy (bit weird, though — it had a whirlpool bathtub, but no shower. So if I wanted to wash my hair, I ended up sitting in the tub, splattering water over everything) so we took a nap and got ready to leave. We left the car at the B&B and google mapped our way to the Bevegemse Vijvers, where the festival took place in what was charmingly called the Fuifzaal. It was quite a walk through nothingness and lots of newly built villas, but after about half an hour we arrived at the site, where Omega Massif was just starting to play. The band didn’t really believe in lighting to accompany their doomy sound, but we drank a few beers during the concert and that really got me into it. The festival was off to a good start!
During the half hour break we quickly had something to eat (which was for the better, because those three beers were doing a fine job of kicking my ass). After a bite we felt better and watched This Will Destroy You which was beautiful, very atmospheric, and very dreamy. One of the better/best concerts of the festival. They ended with “Threads!” (Squee!) They have a very ambient vibe going, and I loved it.
Closer of the night was Pelican which made Olli incredibly happy, because they were pretty much topping his ‘I must see this dammit’ list for the past two years or so. They played tightly, it was a very good show, and Olli was extremely satisfied. We walked home through the drizzle rain and the cold that night, more than a little intoxicated and extremely pleased with our first day.

Saturday
But things got only better on the second day. Unfortunately, though, we slept way too late and only had about four hours of sleep till our 9am breakfast at the B&B. If we would have been smart, we would have gone back to bed afterwards, but we didn’t. We hung around for a while, I took a bath, and we ended up at the Bevegemse Vijvers (with car, this time, which we would leave on the parkinglot overnight) at the time when the second day would start. For some reason the festival had everything, except a place to stash coats, so we opted to stash our coats in the car, where we also had some munchies, drinks, and smokes. It was a great place to dump all our merchandise as well. DAMN we bought a lot of merch! Lots of t-shirts and cd’s. And we saw EVERYTHING that day.
13h30-14h00 – The beauty the world makes us hope for (FR) – was nice enough. Olli said the drummer kind of sucked, though. We had our first beer of the day and listened while sitting on tables.
14h30-15h10 – Alright The Captain (UK) – was surprisingly good. They had a very inspired bass player and were very funky. Olli loved the shit out of it and we bought some merch. Their cd (which we played in the car home) is very nice.
15h40-16h20 – Kasan (DE) – can’t really remember. They were nice enough I suppose, and they had some pretty sweet projections in the background. We didn’t see all of it, though, because we were fucking exhausted. We went back to the car, had a smoke, and then promptly had a nap for an hour in the car. (it was way too cold outside)
16h50-17h30 – Lento (IT) – we caught the last half hour of Lento, which sounded good.
18h00-18h40 – The Allstar Project (PT) – was one of the huge surprises of the festival for me. They were beautiful, wonderful, very dreamy, solidly played. For me they were a complete nobody, I’d never heard of them. But when they started playing… they blew my mind. Thankfully you can find all their stuff on Spotify, I’d definitely recommend them. As will anyone on the festival, if the run on their merchandise after the show is any indication.
19h10-20h20 – Vessels (UK) – very fun! A little bit more towards electronica, and very chatty with the audience. I liked them a lot, they were totally sympathetic and played really well. Good times, good times.
20h50-21h50 – Beware of Safety (US) – Yay! One of the bands we came for and they totally didn’t disappoint. Loved their show, loved that they played ‘Hexa’, loved everything about them. Very solid show.
22h20-23h30 – If These Trees Could Talk (US) – Lots of love! It was their first time in Europe and the crowd (and Ol and I) loved them. It was another of the bands we came for that totally didn’t disappoint. We also found out that they have three (!) guitar players, and their melodies wove together like a thing of beauty. Lovely stuff.
00h00-01h10 – Steak Number Eight (BE) – After all the mellow melodies of the bands that came before, I was completely out of it for SN8 later on. I was also completely exhausted, so I don’t think I enjoyed it as much as I could have. But “The Sea Is Dying” was beautiful once more, and they had an interesting projection going on behind them. (I loved the one they had for ‘Dickhead’ btw, no idea if it carried over on picture). So yeah, what a day, what a festival so far. It was completely nuts how much great stuff we saw.
We staggered home at 1.30 or something, underneath the full moon and a cloudless, cold night, happy with a fine day of music. We immediately crawled in bed afterwards and slept like the dead.

Sunday
We had our breakfast again at 9am, but afterwards we crawled back in bed and slept exhaustedly till 1pm. We were SO FUCKING TIRED the day before, we would rather now miss out some of the earlier playing bands than fall over during the main acts. So after waking up we went into Zottegem to find some decent food (we ended up having a salad in a tearoom somewhere) before we went to the Bevegemse Vijvers.
Because of that, we didn’t get to the Fuifzaal until 3-ish.
15h30-16h10 – Terraformer (BE) – played IN the hall, instead of on the stage. Also, there were no lights. It was kind of confusing. It was a good show, I suppose, but Olli and I ended up sitting on the balcony at the merch place to be somewhat comfortable and to actually SEE something. I just kept stumbling about in the dark.
16h40-17h20 – Sky Architects (DK), however, gave a great show! They were one of the few bands to have some vocals, and that completely added to the atmosphere. I think I was more impressed than Ol was, but I had a great time with the band. They were also very sympathetic on stage (until afterwards during 65daysofstatic they were in the audience before me and insisted on telling each other their fucking life stories and I wanted to kick them). But I bought their cd’s anyway, because they completely deserved it!
Afterwards, we went into town to a pizzeria and had another decent meal. What a difference it makes to have some solid food in you! We had to sacrifice Late Night Venture and most of the surprisingly good Samuel Jackson Five for it, but it was worth it.
20h20-21h20 – Atlantis (NL) – good show, although the sound wasn’t optimal from the balcony, where we were sitting at that time. I think I hyped this one more in my head than I should have, because it was good but not as brilliant as I hoped.
21h50-23h00 – SleepMakesWaves (AUS), however, did it exactly the other way around. Holy fuck! They DID everything I hoped for, and I didn’t even expect that much from them. They were beautiful and awesome and ambient and I loved it. One of the best gigs of the festival. Olli bought me a t-shirt as a surprise during the gig because we both felt they would completely sell out their stuff after the show. I love the snot out of both the shirt and the cd.
During the break, Olli and I sat in the car to drop off our merchandise and mused which might be the best band we’ve seen in the past three days, because, as I stupidly said, I wasn’t counting on 65daysofstatic to blow everything out of the water. We mused a lot, and decided we didn’t know, because there was just SO MUCH great music. So we couldn’t really decide.
And then, the headliner:
00h00-01h10 – 65daysofstatic (UK). Well, that blew my fragile little mind. I knew 65daysofstatic leaned towards electronica at times. I knew I loved their song “Radio Protector” and that I enjoyed their music. But they they climbed that stage and proceeded to own my fucking soul with a greatest hits show that made me lose my fucking shit near the end. WHAT A PARTY! I’m not sure whether to call it just incredible or really revolutionary, because it so came out of nowhere and it was so awesome. Live rock/electronica FTW. It reminded me of Pendulum and the Prodigy at times. Especially the encore. And oh, “Radio Protector”. And those drums. And the FUCKING ENCORE.
Don’t know what I mean? Then listen to this song, featured below. And imagine that with live drums, live guitars, and a crowd that is tearing the place down. If you’re impatient, then start at 4 minutes. That’s when the good stuff starts rolling.

And then on Monday we had our breakfast and went home, where I proceeded to sit in the bath tub for the rest of the day, reading The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins (which is awesome, btw).
(pictures will follow, btw)

Filed under: Festival, Journal, Music, music recommendation

Just got home from Dunk!festival. It was awesome, it was great. Can’t recommend it enough.

The B&B was fine, although a 30 min walk from the festival place. We ended up walking home a couple of times, but most of the time we just parked the car next to the Bevegemse Vijvers so we had a place to stuff our merch (which is something we completely SPLURGED on. I think we bought for over E200 on merch alone. T-shirts, but mostly CD’s. The merch was dirt cheap and we wanted to support the bands that were playing there. Many of the bands were playing in Europe (or even outside their home country) for the first time.

But yeah, what do I want to recommend? Pretty much EVERYTHING. Olli and I saw 18 (!!) bands in three days and none of them were bad. None of them were average either.

I will list them later, with stories to accompany them… but for now: I am going to take a long bath. I think we deserved that

Filed under: Journal, Music, music recommendation

I hardly dare to announce it out loud, but I finished up the last edits on Leercurve today. I already sat down with the jury reports for Fantastels a couple of weeks ago, but I finalised the finishing touches tonight. It’s unbelievable how much crap there still was in that story when I sent it in to the story contest. This story shouldn’t have done as well as it did. I’m such a slob where it comes to editing. I wish I was better with details, seriously.

Anyhow, what I didn’t want to say out loud (because what if it doesnt work out?) is that I sent it in to Pure Fantasy. I’m very curious what the editors for that magazine will make of it. It’s pretty different from Geboorterecht and features SF instead of Fantasy. I hope it still fits in the kind of stories they usually publish. Also, blood and gore and lots of death. Anyway, we’ll see how it turns out. If the story doesn’t get published, big fucking deal. I still blew some people away with this story, and I still have that eighth position in Fantastels that I can put in my pocket.

So it’s sent, and now we wait. In the meantime, I should REALLY get my ass in gear about editing my Crystal story. Time is ticking and the story isn’t really getting edited. Brenda’s feedback was invaluable and made for a few beautiful extra scenes (and a completely rewritten chapter 7), but now it’s time to do what I’m so bad at: the actual editing. You know, the mistakes and stuff. The anglicisms, the double words, the broken grammar because of half-rewritten sentences, the works. I need to print the whole damn thing and utilize Holly Lisle’s One Pass Revision Method – that’s the only thing that’ll work. It’s just… daunting, you know? The story is over 75K in words. But yes, I should show some fucking guts and DO IT. No guts, no glory, right?

Filed under: Journal, Writing