Extrema
Outdoor Festival, AquaBest,
Eindhoven, The Netherlands
Extrema Outdoor
Dance Festival Review...
On Saturday July 18 Dutch
party organisation Extrema, welcomed 45.000 party people for
the 14th edition of their famous outdoor festival “Extrema
Outdoor”. For the 7th year in a row the festival was
completely sold out. Not a big surprise when you have names
such as Deadmau5, James Zabiela, Axwell, Sander Kleinenberg,
Steve Angello, Dirty South, Wally Lopez, James Holden, Dave
Clarke, Tiga, Josh Wink, Funkerman and many others on your
line up!
The location for “Extrema Outdoor” was recreation
area “Aquabest” in Best. Best is a small city
that’s next to Eindhoven, located in the south of The
Netherlands. All stages at the party area are build next to
a big lake and for this year Extrema had something special.
Normally it’s a pretty long walk from one side from
the lake till the other one, so for this year Extrema had
the worlds biggest temporary bridge! So people could get easier
and a lot quicker to the different areas. In the middle of
the stage there was even a little area with a DJ and space
to dance as well!
On Saturday morning there were still some dark clouds above
the south part of The Netherlands, but by the time we arrived
at the festival area, it started to get sunny! After parking
the car we had to walk for a bit, then we picked up our press
passes and after a quick security check we got in. And still
no rain, but lots of sun! Awesome festival weather!
We first walked to the Future Funk area to see Spanish DJ
/ producer Wally Lopez. The stage was pretty packed already
and lots of people were having an awesome time! The whole
stage looked awesome, but that was not a surprise since Extrema
is an organisation that is known for having lots of great
decorations at their parties and festivals. When we were in
front of the stage, all of a sudden the crowd moved back and
some dressed up people walked through the audience. There
were even some horses, pretty awesome!
Wally Lopez played a bit longer, since we’ve heard
that Dirty South was stuck in a traffic jam. But he wasn’t
too late, since he arrived about 15 minutes after he was supposed
to be on, so it wasn’t too bad. The Australian DJ took
over the decks from Mr. Lopez and started his set with some
pumping beats!
We stayed for a bit to see Dirty South and to listen to his
set. He played pretty good and the crowd loved it as well.
The weather was still good, so that was a very nice bonus
as well! After a while we got a bit thirsty, so it was time
to get some tokens for drinks and food. There were plenty
of places to get those tokens and we didn’t had to wait
long at all, in fact, we didn’t had to wait at all!
Plus the tokens were for both food and drinks. It’s
always pretty irritating when you have to get different tokens
for food and drinks, so this was easy!
We decided to check out one of the other areas and since
we were pretty close to the Lakeside area, we had a little
look over there. When we entered the Lakeside tent it was
Lee Burridge who was playing, but it was almost the end of
his set, so we also witnessed the first few minutes of Joris
Voorn’s set.
Because Axwell was starting with his set pretty soon, we
left the Lakeside area and walked back to the Future Funk
area. In the meantime we got some yummy fresh fruit and walked
between some hammocks with people that were relaxing. Shame
there were no more left! But you can’t have everything
of course!
The Future Funk area was really packed now and Dirty South
was really rocking it! He just played ‘How Soon Is Now’,
a new track that he made together with David Guetta and Sebastian
Ingrosso. And Dirty South was having a good time himself as
well. Always nice to see DJ’s enjoying themselves during
their set! At the end of his set he played a cool and groovy
(bootleg) remix of “Flight 643” by Tiësto!
Not too long after that Swedish House Mafia member Axwell
took over the decks! He started with some tracks such as “Leave
The World Behind”, a track from the Swedish House Mafia
together with Dutchman Laidback Luke, “TV Rock feat
Rudy – In The Air (Axwell Remix)” and a mash up
of Underworld’s “Born Slippy” with the Eric
Prydz track “Pjanoo”.
After a while we got hungry, so time for some food! So after
a little walk over the festival area, we arrived at the massive
food area! There was a lot of choice, so pizza, fries, Mexican
food, noodles, sandwiches, you name it! There was even a DJ
who played some latin beats there! For the rest there were
some dancers and a live band who played music as well! So
enough entertainment when you were waiting for your food or
already eating your food. We got ourselves some pizza slices
and we found a nice spot in the grass to enjoy our food and
to rest a bit.
When we finished our pizza, it was time to walk to the main
stage to see Deadmau5, since he was about to start. We walked
next to the lake and from there you had a nice view on the
huge bridge, with the letters “Extrema” in the
middle. Very cool!
When we were almost at the main stage, we saw that it was
packed! So busy! Deadmau5 just started his set and we noticed
plenty of people in the crowd with cool Deadmau5 masks, that
were handed out for free to the audience! Funny! Of course
he was wearing his famous Deadmau5 mask himself as well! In
the meantime he started playing his own Deadmau5 track “Ghosts
And Stuff”.
Some other stuff that he played: “The Reward Is Cheese”
(Deadmau5 vs Jelo), his “Harder Faster Better Stronger”
remix (Daft Punk) and his own “Sometimes Things Get,
Whatever”.
The problem at big festivals is that there is a pretty big
chance that your favorite DJ’s play at different stages
at the same time! And indeed, we wanted to see both Deadmau5
and Steve Angello, but they were clashing. So after watching
Deadmau5 for a while, we decided to walk back to the Future
Funk area for some more Swedish House Mafia! The quickest
way was to do this via the huge bridge over the lake, so that’s
what we did!
Just a little bit later we were back at the Future Funk stage
and Steve Angello was already busy with his set. Axwell was
still on stage as well and he was checking out Steve’s
set as well from the backside of the stage.
The area was even busier than before, so many people were
dancing and having a good time. And there was still sun and
not even one drop of rain! Perfect festival weather! See,
never trust the weather forecast!
While Dirty South and Axwell were having a conversation on
the stage and making fun in the meantime, Steve played a new
remix from the “Pancake” classic “Don’t
Turn Your Back On Me”. One of the producers of this
track is Erick E and he was already waiting backstage, since
after Steve’s set he and DJ Roog had to close the Future
Funk stage as “Housequake”.
The last track in Steve Angello’s set was “Missing
Rotterdam”, a track by Abel Ramos and Miss Melody with
the vocals of the Everything But The Girl track “Missing”.
Steve played the bootleg version that Axwell made a while
ago.
When Housequake (Erick E and Roog) started, we walked back
to the Lakeside area to see a bit of James Zabiela and Sander
Kleinenberg as well. We just saw the last few minutes of Zabiela
and then Dutchman Sander Kleinenberg came one stage.
Sander Kleinenberg played tracks such as “Drop The
Pressure” by Mylo, “2 Months Off” by Underworld
and of course the new Sander Kleinenberg track “This
Is Our Night”.
He had some cool visuals on the screens behind him as well
and the whole tent was pretty much filled with dancing people!
There were still a few areas which we didn’t had a chance
to visit yet, so at the end we decided to walk to the Royal
Dutch stage to see what was going on there!
When we arrived at the Royal Dutch stage we saw that the
whole stage was in Delftware blue and it looked like a big
windmill, so indeed, Royal Dutch for sure! Sunnery James &
Ryan Marciano were playing for a big audience as well. It
looked really cool to see people dance during the sunset!
At 22:35 there was a big end show, but since we didn’t
wanted to be stuck in traffic, we decided to leave a bit before
that. But … I was lucky since when I was just home Dutch
TV station BNN broadcasted some highlights of Extrema Outdoor,
so there I could see the awesome end show! Lots of light-
and smoke effects! Of course plenty of lasers and a lot of
fireworks! Just check on YouTube, since you just have to see
this spectacular show yourself!
Conclusion:
At this years Extrema Outdoor, there were 9 different stages
and this year there was an extremaly good and various line
up. There were some famous names, but there was also space
for new and upcoming talent. The huge bridge over the lake
was awesome and saved lots of people a lot of time! If you
wanted to get coins, food and drinks you didn’t had
to wait too long, so no long waiting lines at all! The whole
atmosphere was very laidback, if you wanted to chill out there
was space enough as well. There were hammocks, Fat Boys or
you could just chill out in the grass. The stages looked great,
nice decorations and from what I could tell from the BNN live
broadcasting on TV, the end show was super awesome as well!
Plus the whole day not even 1 little drop of run! What else
can you wish for Looking forward to Extrema Outdoor 2010
already!
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