Shine Dance Festival 2002
Living in Holland and loving dance music isn't always easy. The summer of
2002 has become a summer of open-air dance. Every weekend there are several
festivals serving you beats and breaks. Like Shine in Eindhoven: having
started as a small festival for alternative music, it now brings you the
best in underground dance. On a rather strange location: the middle of the
city center.
10 augustus 2002, City Center, Eindhoven (NL)
Publicatiedatum: 19 augustus 2002
Living in Holland and loving dance music isn't always easy. The summer of 2002 has become a summer of open-air dance. Every weekend there are several festivals serving you beats and breaks. Like Shine in Eindhoven: having started as a small festival for alternative music, it now brings you the best in underground dance. On a rather strange location: the middle of the city center.
Underground dance music is urban music, the organizers of Shine state. This attitude has resulted in a festival that has been around for five years now. Located in the surroundings of the city hall square, Shine brings you two stages with electro, breakbeat and jungle and a mainstage with techno. Both location and line-up, differ from most dance festivals in The Netherlands. For once Trance and commercial techno rule, while features such as recreational areas (fully equipped with swimming pool or lake), bungee-jump installations and other 'I want to forget my live for just one day' activities are the most popular. Shine is held in the city center of Eindhoven, a Southern Dutch city with a healthy techno, hiphop and drum'n'bass scene. A very fine location, especially when night falls. Surrounding the festival area are high office buildings and weird postmodern street lamps. Furthermore, the Amsterdam based art group Robodock has situated strange android-like statues across the area. Robodock also uses strange robot-like horses that move without making a sound and a bicycle consisting only of two giant wheels to disorientate the visitors. In combination with the music this gives the festival just the right atmosphere.
Due to the heavy competition among festivals and the bad weather-forecast, Shine started slow. Loes Lee, Break 3000 and Alden Tyrell played good sets for just a handful of people. But when Andrew Weatherall and Punk Roc hit the decks the festival started to get more crowded. Both Weatherall and Punk Roc had something to prove. Weatherall that he is still able to be as innovative as he was before, Punk Roc that rumours about him not writing and producing his own music weren't true. Both succeeded. Weatherall's set gently mixed heavy nu skool breaks with progressive breaks and a little bit of electro. Tasteful and danceable. Just like Skint label boss Damian Harris' set. As Midfield General he produces one-dimensional big beat but as a deejay he manages to stay interesting by mixing different kinds of breakbeat together, adding some big beat to spice things up.
Dutch talents I-F and Legowelt managed to get everybody dancing with sublime electroclash or "coca disco" as they call it. The first mixed in some eighties classics to pay tribute to his heroes, the latter unravelled the influences of the new electro hype: exciting breaks, nearly out-of-tune synth patterns, filthy basslines and some Italo House added to it. Will electroclash be the next big thing? It looks like it. Even famous Dutch techno deejay Lady Aïda played some new wave electro classics in her good techno set, and everybody loved it. Just like they loved Kowalski and Raz Ohara who did an incredibly cool parody of the whole techno scene. Ohara shouting his out-of-tune sounding vocals, making fairy dance passes while Kowalski was looking for the right beat. Their efforts resulted in some good techno-pop and German techno-house.
Hardly danceable but intriguing enough was the intelligent dance music by young Dutch talent Esage Music. His drones were nearly as psychedelic as Adrian Sherwood's dub reggae, that still has the ability to create a magical atmosphere.
But there were also some disappointments. Like the inspirationless techno set by 100 % Isis, who tried to mix in some coca-disco but woefully failed. Or the good techno set by Heiko Laux that lacked tension after the brilliant eclectic electro/techno mix by Lady Aïda. Most disappointing was the set by drum&bass stars 4 Hero. Their tame performance consisting of downtempo lounge and trip hop sporadically mixed with drum&bass was not exciting enough to hold the attention. Only at the end they managed to inspire by playing some Reinforced stuff driven by a hectic amen break and deep basslines. Too late.
Also disappointing: the absence of drum&bass superstar Shy FX. In his place Lee Coombs played a longer set with some drum&bass in it. A good set, but not enough to ease the pain.
Nevertheless Shine 2002 has been great, with fine music, a good location and enough room for street artists to show their (sometimes illegal) activities. But most of all, Shine 2002 showed the rise of electro as the new hippest of hip. Not only in the dance underground but also in mainstream dance-culture. Let's hope the festival will be able to survive without getting too commercial.
http://www.kindamuzik.net/live/shine/shine-dance-festival-2002/1788/
Meer Shine op KindaMuzik: http://www.kindamuzik.net/artiest/shine
Deel dit artikel: