Sunday, April 20, 2008

Report: Polsslag, Hasselt

The goal of Polsslag Festival in Hasselt is to give a flavor of what's hot in music land, an indoor version of Pukkelpop but limited in space (4 rooms in stead of 8 stages), in time (1 day in stead of 3) and obviously with less big names (Metallica won't show up here, they'll be in Hasselt end of August). I wasn't fan of the line-up on the Main Stage and Marquee: a lot of unknown bands, The Breeders are lovely, but it has been 15 years when they were smoking hot. I've never heard of headliner Angels And Airwaves, the band of Blink 182 - singer Tom DeLonge, but I guess there's a reason they're playing top of the bill.

On the other hand, the Boiler and Dance Hall - line-ups were great. Not the hot, hot dance acts, but however some of my heroes were present (Erol, Boys Noize, MSTRKRFT) so this couldn't go wrong. A small overview of our 'parcours':

Bloody Beetroots: I knew them from a couple of very good remixes (Escape - Toxic Avenger is their best), and in the middle of the afternoon, they played the best set yesterday, pretty hard, a lot of variation, they really hit it off.


DJ Mehdi: the only representative of the Ed Banger - crew at Polsslag, and didn't impress me at all. Decent, but no more than that.


MSTRKRFT: really good set, heavy as usual, with some really great nu rave - tracks. They rule!


Dr Lektroluv: the most crowdy set of the day. The man with the green mask brought a brand new pumping set, including a reworked version of my all time favorite Walkman and a remix of the new Subs-single 'Papillon', the one I wrote about last week.



Boys Noize: a lot of people for the German DJ as well. I've seen him 3 or 4 times before, and he hardly changed his set, so the magic is a bit gone for me. His tracks and remixes still rocked the place however.


Alter Ego: I can be short about them: boring. So didn't stay longer than 10 minutes.


Erol Alkan: still my favorite DJ, played 3 tracks I know (and that must be a miracle), including Vitalic's 'Newman', Brodinski's 'Bad Runner' and Dusty Kid's 'The Cat'. We left after half an hour, since we were exhausted (with pain in my heart, but hey, I'm getting older, you know ;))


Overall, a satisfying first Polsslag-edition: really good sets of Bloody Beetroots, MSTRKRFT, Dr Lektroluv and Erol Alkan, lovely beautiful people, good vibrations, good beer (Grimbergen!), easy accessible stages and only 2 euros for parking (respect!). Only negative points could be the line-up: I expected more hot new acts in boiler and dance (why Carl Craig as headliner?) and maybe a big name in the main room? And I start feeling a bit old in there: a lot of kids who are half my age, and 12 hours of shaking is apparently the maximum I can handle these days :) But it was a nice day out in Hasselt, thanx to Phantom for the tickets!

You can find more videos on my YouTube - channel. Enjoy!

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hehe, I had to leave too after 12 hours :-). Came in around noon, went to see Foxylane (best live act I saw at Polsslag, but they were the only one ;-)). Bloody Beetroots were great, DJ Mehdi alright (the end of his set was funny, the guy really amused himself, a lot better than a seemingly bored SebastiAn!).

Cassius was OK, especially when they used the accapella's from their older hits! Boys Noize was technically alright, but I didn't like his setlist.

I think some people missed the entrance of Plopsa Indoor ;-).

Anonymous said...

respect the blog. but you got the bloody beetroots all wrong.

escape is the best remix?

maybe u should have a listen to more of their stuff.

Rave Grohl said...

@ Anonymous: will do! But imo (that can and will be different than others of course ;)), the Escape-remix is really great, love it.

Gijs said...

Hello Rave :)

Nice blog! Great Polsslag report! Can you ID the last track of the Erol Alkan movie? It starts at 3.45...

Thanks

Rave Grohl said...

@ Gijs: thanx!
About the track: I don't have a clue, don't think I ever heard that one before... The guy is playing some many tracks that will be hot only a few months later: I was really surprised last Saturday I knew a few tracks :) But: keep an eye on his podcasts and playlists (www.erolalkan.co.uk), and maybe you can ID the track there.

Cheers!

Gijs said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Gijs said...

Good news! I checked out his chart and I found the song :D
It's "Housemeister - In order to dance"

Tnx 4 the tip

Anonymous said...

first of all, nice report, wish I was there!
second, do you know the name of the first song in your boys noize movie? You can hear only a few beats... Heard it a few times and I'm fond of that song!

thx in advance!

BrUk

Rave Grohl said...

@bruk: if I'm correct, the song you're talking about should be Reel 2 Real feat. The Mad Stuntman - I Like To Move It (More's instrumental).

Cheers!