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!
