Dour 2016

‘DOOOOUUUURRREEEEHHHHHH!’

 

Was the chorus that greeted me as I got off the shuttle bus from the train station on the final leg of my journey to Dour. I’d set off from Barcelona that very same morning and everything from the flight to the train ride had run like clockwork. I was especially excited for this one. Dour boasted a hench, eclectic line up and whats more my fellow festival general Petch and my very dear friend Deirdre were what made up my own little festival dream team. What’s more Petch had very kindly forked out for the Glamping experience – a tipi in the festivals ‘Village’ area. Needless to say I’d been looking forward to this one for months.

 

I was sat on the gravel walkway that lead to the festival, waiting for Deirdre, who to her credit had cycled all the way to the festival from her family’s house somewhere else in Belgium, was having a bit of trouble finding her way to main gate of the festival. Whilst sat waiting for her on the path an incredibly wasted dreadlocked youth stumbled around infront of me, dribbling and ranting in French, the only words of his ramblings I could make out being ‘ketamine’… ‘It’s going to be one of those festivals’ I thought. I found Deirdre by the entrance to the festival, the first time I’d seen her in exactly 2 years.

 

‘Look at all this youth’ she said as we walked towards the turnstiles to the festival. I couldn’t agree more, I had the impression Dour was to be Europes answer to Reading festival with all it’s corporate banners and cool lineup consisting of old legends and an array of new hot talent including The Prodigy, Rudimental, Underworld, Fat White Family, Fakear, Sigur Ros and The Pixies. There was also an entire stage devoted to Punk, metal and hardcore. The very impressive outdoor Red Bull Stage that had sets from D&B heavyweights Bad Company, Roni Size, Spor and even the only Dub step I genuinely enjoy in the way of Ganja White Night making an appearance. Richie Hawtin and Dave Clarke were 2 of the biggest Techno names to play during the 5-day festival and there was also a whole area dedicated to Dub as well as a shit load of hip-hop, R&B, reggae, indie and so forth spread over 9 stages. In short there was plenty on offer to keep us entertained over the week.

 

As we settled in to our luxury new digs, which also included our own bar, showers, toilets and dining area. Petch revealed the Arsenal of drugs that we was to somehow try and work our way through for the duration of the festival. The war chest included: A bottle of GHB, a vile of cocaine, a couple of grams of ketamine, 2 sheets of 2 kinds of blotter acid, a few hits of ecstasy and 2 grams of Heisenberg with some valium rations for bed time. In short it was more gear then the 3 of us were ever physically going to be able to consume over the course of 5 days but we were prepared to give it a go.

 

We set out shortly afterwards for our first recce of the site and I ‘spose its worth mentioning first off a few things to bare in mind about Dour before you start to consider it as a future festival. First off it’s incredibly corporate and obviously with corporate festivals comes the standard split in arena and camping area, meaning that all booze and food must be bought inside the arena, this being said there didn’t appear to be any limits on how much booze or food can be brought into the camping area – although of course glass is not allowed. Also purchasing booze and food is done through a token system and from what I remember €11 would get you 6 drinks token whilst €10 would get you the same amount in food tokens. 2 tokens would get you the usual European sized beer whilst 4 would get you a ‘grande’ Food prices would vary but was also pretty expensive. I think I remember 4 tokens getting a portion of chips. So despite the festival itself coming in at a very reasonable €120 at early bird (€150 face value) be prepared to spunk a huge wedge on both food and drink, although in saying that there is a supermarket down the road and having access to a motor is handy as we stocked up enough drink and munch to keep us satisfied during our down time at least.

 

The Wednesday of the festival appeared to be the settling day with only the main stage (The Last Arena) playing music and only a third of the whole arena area being open. One notable area being the specialist beer area, where punters can buy more traditionally stronger Belgian beer (Leffe) for an extra token and also drink it out of a fancy glass – also for an extra token deposit.

 

The first music we saw was French act Salut C’est Cool who were due to play 5 different sets over the weekend. A lively bunch with a stage show of colourful cardboard cut outs being paraded around and energetic dance moves choreographed to each song. Their sound was almost was Hard-tek beats over French MC’ing. However some tracks had a very generic poppy sound to them and to the lads credit they seemed to be very much in control of the crowd with their commands. Very bouncy and fun, a good warm up act. As night fell it was 2 English acts that were to follow, first being The Vaccines who’s existence and relevance I had totally forgotten about. However we didn’t stay for long due to Deirdre’s dislike of Indie rock and for my complete disinterest in the band. After them was cheesy dance act Netsky, who I hadn’t heard of before but are a sound similar in vein to that of Rudimental who I actually quite like. Netsky seemed to ooze too much Radio 1 vibes for my liking and we soon made back to our luxury beds for the night. Along the way we bumped into one of the only other English people I was to meet all week in the form of a chatty Geordie geezer who took a while to realize that we too were speaking the same language. ‘I’ll leaves you too it mon because I’ll just go oon and oon if you let me like’ so we left him and went to bed.

 

The arena at Dour doesn’t open till 2pm every day and shuts off at about 4am the following morning. What struck me straight away was how residential the surrounding area was. Even the main stage that blares music till 2am backs onto a row of houses and makes no bones about being as loud as it possibly can (Although it did have a few technical difficulties of which I’ll touch on later) I even laughed at how The Dub Corner with its relentless eyeball rattling bass was basically in the back garden of the suburb just behind it. Made me think of all the UK festivals I’d been to, most particularly Glade where one year the Overkill stage had its volume limited to almost talking level because of the complaints of a couple of residents. Seems that in Belgium the locals are politely told that an event is taking place and that there will be noise for 5 days and suggest that maybe they plan their holiday around that time. The festival has been running since 1989 so I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the case.

 

Another thing I noticed straight away was that in comparison to other European festivals and especially considering it’s location in a multi lingual country, Dour is mainly French speaking which made tasks like ordering drinks and food a bit of a challenge, so I was grateful that we had an interpreter in the form of Deirdre to teach us simple phrases, especially as Petch had taken to ordering his drinks in Spanish. That being said quite a lot of it’s attendee’s had a fair grasp of the English language and were always up for trying to converse in English.

 

A charming element to Dour is that despite its 27 year life span at times the organisation felt like a bit of a shambles. The programs that were handed out on the second day had the dates from the previous year printed on them and the write ups of each band were all written in that most common of dialects Dutch which was especially hilarious considering the festival is held in a French speaking region. The entrance to the arena also involved going through airport style metal detectors that seemed to go off at random. To test this we’d often go through without taking anything out of our pockets and find that no security would have any interest in searching us at all.

 

So Thursday night main stage was dominated by two British dance music heavyweights. The first being newly crowned champions from London – Rudimental, who made their name by their tirelessly lively performances on the festival circuit back home and now due to having their tracks played on various commercials and TV shows are very much household names. They’d been somewhat of a guilty pleasure of mine and I would share my secret affair with my main man Dinn back home, so of course they were one of my people to see over the course of the week. Unfortunately though whoever they had in as soundman had done a terrible job of linking them up. Drums were louder then they should have been on some songs, bass was almost non-existent and the female vocal on fan favourite ‘Not Giving In’ was completely non existent. A major disappointment so we left early for a little walk around until the God’s of stadium rave The Prodigy were due to start. I’d seen the boys from Braintree twice a few years ago, the first being at the doomed Gatecrasher festival when they returned from their hiatus at the time and they were absolutely phenomenal. The second being only a couple of years later and feeling the complete opposite as I remember describing the gig at Wembley Arena as ‘A couple of 40 year old men running round on stage shouting fuck’ I didn’t really have many expectations of them at Dour and I was right to do so as again I was left with a similar feeling. There was no problem with the sound or anything, nor did I really have a problem with the setlist containing a lot of new material. Infact some of the new stuff which actually sounded pretty phat. It just simply felt like those fella’s are now passed it. Even the classics sounded flat and Maxim and Kieth were just not able to get what was already a very rowdy crowd going. My excuse for this was that I had Deirdre’s warm, ecstasy fueled embrace wrapped around me for the duration of the set. I think the lads should consider down scaling their act a bit… Maybe do a more intimate gig then they’re used to at one of those raves they put on in holiday parks back in the UK maybe?

 

We left The Prodigy at about half way into their set and set sail for ‘De Red Bull Elektropedia Balzaal’ an outdoor stage surrounded by an impressive sound rig and LED visuals to watch Roni size & Krust drop one of the hardest D&B sets I’ve heard in a very long time. Made all the previous times I’ve seen the geezer pale in comparison although I think a lot of it was owed to the impressive venue he was playing and also that the pills we swallowed were pretty potent.

 

The rest of the evening went in a bit of a gurney blur. I seem to remember the 3 of us being sat round in ‘La Cubanisto Dancing’ tent until we decided to take the party back to the tipi and try and work our way through some of the war chest. So off we went hand in hand on the long walk back home.

 

I remember Petch saying his stash of ketamine was from years ago, before it lost the general quality of todays standards. Excited by this news I hoofed up a nice 6-inch line of the shite which changed the appearance of the inside of the tipi into a cathedral, with its spired roof top now shooting far off into the heaven and the dimensions of its walls becoming several meters wider then they actually were, and there sat in the middle of it all was a smiling Geisha, who turned out to be just Deirdre. ‘The Sagrada Familia aint got nothing on this’

 

Once I was able to find my feet me Dierdr’ made our way out into the dawn which looked all the more cinematic from the ketamised filter that was still contrasting my vision. On the way back we had one of those tender pieces of festival chat when I asked her whether she was aware of anyone else who was as amazing as her or if it was just a case of her being unique? To which she smiled and replied ‘I don’t know… Do you know anyone else who’s as amazing as you?’

We fell back into the tipi, shoveled another line up our noses, swallowed a Valium, then the 3 of us melted into a cuddle puddle on the floor until we all fell asleep.

 

The following afternoon me and Deirdre went for a walk around the festivals market place in search of balloons for the stash of nos Petch had remembered he had hidden in the boot of his car. To give it its due the markets at Dour do have a nice variety of garms and accessories that seemed to be much better quality then some of the tat you find at UK festivals. I did have a bit of a laugh at the ‘Indian Headresses €15’ sign at one stall. Apparently cultural appropriation hasn’t made its way to Europe yet. Sure enough there were ample number of punters seen in the disrespectful headgear all weekend. I eyed up a #Kush hat for my main man of the same name back home and a must have psychedelic Homer Simpson piece for my new digs upon my return.

 

We felt that afternoon would be the ideal time to drop some of Petchs famous festival acid he had stocked all summer. A smooth and mild trip with a lovely festival shine to its visuals with its visceral features being a simple warm and jolly glow. Beautiful weather + good company + good music X positive vibes = the perfect storm for tripping. We started our quest by chilling out in the early evening sun to the sounds of Biga*Ranx a French Hip-hop & Reggae fusion which was actually a really welcomed surprise, so much so I insisted that we stayed till the end before then heading off to more tripping and chilling in the Dub corner where by which point the lot of us were laughing our little heads off at absolutely everything. What was entertaining me though was my everlasting astonishment at the row of houses that backed onto the Dub Corner. Deirdre interjected with one of many of her adorable quotes that afternoon by saying ‘if you look at the street it just looks like it’s just 2 or 3 big houses, but they’re not its lots of little houses and they are just all squished! You can tell by each of their tiny windows eh.’ To give her her due tripping with Deirdre that day was actually a real delight if anything she was sailing the ship of the trip for the both of us as the evening grew on, which is saying something considering that sometimes when you drop acid with people who don’t particularly have any experience with psychedelics or any drugs at all in her case they can sometime get a bit too intense or annoying. Dierdr’ was a welcomed member of mine and Petch’s festival platoon and watching her roam around the festival with that endearing smile constantly pinned to her face, one arm perched out holding her purse, looking more like she was shopping on Oxford Street then roaming around a messy festival really kept morale sky high.

 

After discovering that Roots Manuva wouldn’t be performing that afternoon we found ourselves in the rut of not really knowing anybody else on the lineup, that was until Fakear was meant to play The Last Arena, a French hip-hop producer who I had only discovered when an in the know friend had suggested them after looking at the lineup. We headed back to the village and cracked another beer and I chewed down the rest of my cured meats that exploded in flavor on my psychedelic taste buds. I then looked at the lineup and realized I had dropped a massive bollock by completely mixing up the time that Fakear was taking the stage, it was 21:00-22:00 not what I thought was the headline slot of 22:00-23:00. Seeing as it was now almost half 9 I thought ‘fuck it’ and opened up another beer. It wasn’t until Dierdre who was very much doffing the captains arm band that evening entered the tipi after a trip to the toilet, heard the news, clapped her hands and demanded ‘Well come on then lets go! If we leave now we can catch the last song!’ So that’s what we did.

 

Sure enough we caught the last track of Fakear’s set. I was surprised to see that the set up is in fact a live band; I always assumed he was just a DJ. I was a bit disappointed we didn’t get to catch the whole thing but that’s just festival luck sometimes. If you aint heard Fakear yet I highly recommend you give some of his/their? E.P’s and now L.P a go. Low tempo Hip-Hop beats with an Eastern twist on a lot of the tracks. I got quite obsessed with them in the lead up to the summer.

 

After that we headed to the Jupiler Dance Hall to catch Peaches give us a racy stage performances to the back drop of some pretty heavy beats. The set included everything from dancing vagina’s (‘This next song is not about my big tits! It’s about my huge Vagina’) flamboyant dance moves to several costume changes in the space of about 20 minutes. Deirdre left us to go say hello to fellow Montrealer Poirier who was playing in the La Cubanisto tent later that night. We met up later at the hilariously named ‘eco area’ A small seated area made up off wooden pallets surrounded by small partitions covered in black plastic bags.

 

Poirer played a set comprised of a mixture of hip-hop and reggae tracks, with one particular track I recall being about Montreal ‘It’s a song about the city you’re going to visit’ Said Dierdr’. The two of us left the set early as Deirdre was starting to feel a bit overwhelmed, to be fair to her though Dour is a pretty intense atmosphere. It’s very busy for a start – apparently the attendance is 150,000 but I’m not sure if I believe this figure. People are very wasted, so much so the Red Cross is on constant patrol with stretchers, infact as the two of us were recalibrating on one of the few seated areas we watched them in action trying to wake a sprawled out punter in the grass. It’s a messy festival where people just tend to chuck their litter in front of them then choose to stick it in a bin and also it’s one of those environments where people will just barge passed you without any need for apology. Also there’s no real chill out area as such and all the music is pretty pounding all of the time so unless you bale and go to your tent there’s no real rest bite from the madness.

 

I decided to escort Deirdr’ back to the tent, sadly she was to leave the following afternoon to get to another event that she had initially travelled all the way from Canada from. I would have twisted her arm and tried to guilt trip her to say but this was something important that really meant a lot to her, so I didn’t bother. The following afternoon I escorted her to her bike, gave her a kiss goodbye and the two of us promised to meet in Berlin the following week. She’d been a great member of the team for the time she was with us and I was really chuffed to have been able to share a leg of my festival odyssey with her.

 

With Deirdre gone this meant Petch and myself could crack open the hard stuff and go a bit crazy ‘Things are going to get pretty weird in here later’ we assured her as she left. We still had an abundance of K, Coke and Heisenberg to work our way through and still plenty of music to see. We spent the Saturday afternoon however dozing in the tipi until the evening time, meaning I missed Ganja White Night and a few other acts that had been recommended to me. When we both awoke from our slumbers we spent a good few hours smoking meth and talking about conspiracy’s, the evolution of AI, as well as the works of our favourite authors. Wired up enough we headed out to catch Sigur Ros….

 

I had some trepidation about seeing Sigur Ros play such a stage and this particular kind of festival. They were the highlight when I saw them headline the John Peel stage just a few weeks earlier at Glastonbury and to be fair to them they put in a pretty good shift at Dour. It was pretty much the same setlist, visuals were still great and the bands epic crescendos and Jonsi’s other worldly vocals were still hair raising. The problem with an act like Sigur Ros is that they command a level of respect from the audience i.e. silence although for its size the crowd were relatively hushed it does break the spell of the band when a few folk next to you decide to have a laugh and joke amongst themselves. Getting in a good hour of the set, we headed over to see another British act that I’d been quite looking forward too: Fat White Family.

 

I’d only been listening to the band for the last couple of months, discovering them after getting on a Butthole Surfers tip, a band which they bare pretty close similarities to, a loud, droning wall of sound with a reputation for being either really good or God awful live. I think we got lucky on this one as the lads played with their trousers down to a very much up for it crowd. I had one fella standing next to me, who for several minutes was so fascinated by a vein protruding out of my head that he stood there grinning and poking me. Clearly tripping, I must have been glowing gold.

 

So after a satisfying set from the Fat Whites which included all the tracks you’d want to here from both albums we were set to be in time to see Underworld close the main stage. Last time I saw them was at Glade back in 09 I think it was where they were given a 2-hour set and a full live band. 2 things that they didn’t need for a live performance also I remember Karl Hyde wearing an offensively loud sequined jacket that really did my head in, and as a result I recall leaving pretty disappointed. At Dour however they absolutely blew it out of the park. The set of the festival and if not the summer in my eyes, I think I had forgotten just how seminal an act they really are. Every track that was dropped I kept saying to myself ‘This is a tune… O and this is a tune’ Even the new stuff was blinding and of course the sound levels were so high and clear enough that the whole of the town could probably hear. All the classics were dropped from ‘2 months off’ ‘Rez’ and of course a rousing 10+ minute version of ‘Born Slippy’ to leave on.

 

 

The rest of that night was spent in the tent floating off our nuts off on ketamine where insanity level points reached Petch regaling me of tales of an LSD Christ figure who’d tried to indoctrinate him into his cult, then the two of us reaching the point of confusion where Petch had to ask me ‘Where are we?… No, seriously where are we?’… ‘In Belgium somewhere… I think’ I replied.

 

The next day Petch decided on bailing a day early. We’d exhausted all the sleep aids and the very thought of trying to devour the rest of the war chest was enough to turn both our stomachs, especially with no guarantee of sleep. I was due to meet a few people in Antwerp the following day, and Petch agreed to book an Air BNB up there before making a dash for the border in the morning. We spent the afternoon trying to polish off the Heisenberg… Then finally looked up online how to get the best out of it and realized that all this time we’d been doing it completely wrong. I made my way into the music to buy some of the gifts I had my eye on and to watch Slaves play on the Cannibal stage… A nice bit of afternoon punk to send me off. What did crack me up was the English lead singer announcing ‘How you doing Brussels?’ then being corrected on his location… ‘O sorry we’re not in Brussels, how you doing Belgium?’ Must be hard when you’re on the road for so long to confuse countries with their capital cities.

 

I would have liked to have catch The Pixies who were headlining that night. Also Mr Oizo who was closing one the stages the following morning, but no way would I have had the capacity to do that even if I tried. No regrets though!

 

I’d recommend Dour, in fact I’d go as far to say as I’d happily return next year. Yes it on paper it’s a filthy corporate sess pit, with squalid toilets and over priced drink and food but it definitely nails it with the music on offer. It’s incredibly eclectic lineup of some top and rare names is something that commercial UK festivals seem to slack on a bit. Ok aside from the obvious Glastonbury, Boomtown is our jewel in the crown for an internationally appealing lineup but there’s something about Dour appealing to the youth of western Europe by offering them a cool lineup of music they actually want to see that I found really blows anything the UK has to offer out of the water for the price of just over 100 quid atleast. The crowd, although rowdy and at times obnoxious were all very friendly and a delightfully mixed and young bunch. Everyone tried their best to speak English with us and I didn’t really encounter any proper dickish behavior. If the lineup is great again next year I’ll try and gather a crew together for it. A corporate shambles