- The town of Dour is situated about two hours south of Brussels and appears to have pulled a very short straw when it comes to local entertainment. Even waiting for the shuttle bus was a chore, what with the area being stalked by revving hatchbacks housing some fairly scruffy members of the local population, just passing the time until local cheese-laden club night "Miami Nice" kicks off. The ride to the festival didn't do much to boost the local reputation either. Rows of abandoned buildings, empty streets, random chunks of debris (did they not clear up after the war?!) and solemn faces were the major sites to pore over.
Arriving on Wednesday turned out to have been a cunning plan. With the campsites already looking like they were hitting capacity, we unleashed the £30 Argos pop-up and raided the local Lidl for some easy whiskey and bread, before testing out the nearby lake and narrowly avoiding a set of cuffed ears from a quite enraged local ranger. All dried down and with the sun scorching everything in sight (including unprotected knees), it was time for Dour.
THURSDAY
With the days here being filled mainly by little-known indie and hardcore bands, this time was usually used to nurse the previous nights antics, and so turned out to be an all-too-rare blessing considering that the schedules back in Britain are usually chock full from about midday til midnight. Nevertheless, it was still tough to find many decent acts playing earlier than one in the morning. A young Belgian journalist had recommended Qemists, but if she seriously believed I could enjoy such pompous, out-of-tune drum & bass then she was sorely mistaken.
Chase and Status did the genre some good, albeit with some mean dubstep thrown in for good measure, but the set still ended up with me pretty much horizontal. A bunch of late 20s/early 30s disco dorks funking it up in wedding dresses and rave glasses was probably exactly what I should've expected from The Glimmers (present Disco Drunkards), and so—at least in the entertainment stakes—they didn't fail to impress.
Deadmau5 sported a slightly less risqué costume, but the lost glamour was made up for with roaring fat synths and a stunning light show. With the weekend's minimal confined to less than a handful of acts, I probably could've savoured Audion's set a bit more (sleeping in the corner of an empty tent with the line-up sheet over your face is not dedication) but I wanted to recharge for some late-night dubstep in the shape of Joker, a young London producer already packing enough original material to spawn a quite relentless live set.
FRIDAY
Animal Collective /// Photo credit: Simon Grossi
If Thursday was the day of dub and bass, then Friday was "2006 electro" day, the year referring to a time of Ed Banger, bloghouse and everything remotely sounding like a broken lawnmower. Before that, though, there was the small matter of Animal Collective to attend to and, even in light of their quite awesome new album, their show was a disjointed mess of badly channelled ideas and experimentations.
Oh well, nothing like a bit of grinding dubstep and Jupiler (stag-fronted Belgian lager) to pick things up, the former coming in the shape of mohawked Leeds ruffian Rusko. Not many dubstep live sets are quite this upfront, but Rusko takes the electro palette and stuffs it with a steppa attitude so mean that whether you like dubstep or not you can't help but stomp along. Carrying on this wonky state of affairs was Brighton-turned-London 4x4 master L-Vis 1990, who's unique(ish) brand of "hyperbass" and garage breaks serves up something of a '90s nostalgia flux. (If only we had airhorns and a Zomby set to tidy this off.)
Slap back to 2006 and in a tent none-too-far I'm faced with the delightful finger wizardry of Feadz, whose scratch renditions of every filthy electro slice he can get his paws on is going down a treat. To be fair, apart from this hip-hop influence it probably would have been almost "just-another-Ed Banger-DJ-set," but it's the little things that matter and this is most certainly one of the best performances I've seen in a while from this crew.
Although nothing was really going to stand up to a Proxy live set was it? I mean, when you've got tracks like "Dancing in the Dark" rubbing shoulders with "Decoy" and "Raven"—and then THAT Tiga remix—no one was really in contention. Belting out of the factories of Moscow in '56, this is industrial electro at its grandest and most absurd[ly good]. Almost too good really even for Jence, whose Digitalism DJ set attempts to ride this wave of distortion only to fall well and truly flat onto its face. If he hadn't attempted to out-heavy Proxy that would've been fine, but he did. And he failed. So let's move on.
SATURDAY
Pet Shop Boys /// Photo credit: Olivier Bourgi
Moving on turned out to be a large bottle of whiskey and a very over enthusiastic tumble (read: rofl) along some of the most battered terrain I have ever laid eyes on. All this in addition to being questioned by some Italian passerby who felt the need to kick my tumbling friend and then inquire if this was in fact my wife. These antics only served as a reminder that, beyond the music, Dour is a place to get out and play, with the quite extravagant characters that adorn its every campsite and corner providing some much needed spontaneous entertainment.
My dad had enthused endlessly about psychedelic rock dinosaurs Gong and the absolute need for me to see them, but to be honest a bunch of old wizards on a stage wigging out on about six different instruments at once wasn't quite what I was in the mood for. So I suppose Pet Shop Boys was? Nope. Actually, I quite missed the thought of Gong at this point. I mean, I GET Pet Shop Boys, but they're just plain boring. The whole robot theme and transforming wall, plus the cringe-worthy club videos on the screens were a stark reminder that some acts do indeed charge on past their Best Before date, and in this case a field full of Europeans paid the price.
We instead bounded off to catch the cheekily-titled Craze and Klever, the US-bred scratch egos facing off on four decks. That's four decks I tell you! Like, they even needed to put it in brackets to remind us. They also reminded us that fidget is now an adopted genre of nearly all hip-hop DJs, as they tore their way through a compilation of Jack Beats et al., all wobbly and Essex-sounding. A bit of MCing was in order too, but more "club MC" than London grime.
Then it was time for minimal act number two (they do spoil us) in the shape of techno pinup Popof. His recent work has caused quite a fluster; it seems even enough to drag the Dour natives out for their Saturday night knees-up. I think "punch-up" would've been more appropriate considering the unsavoury nature of most characters here, but who am I to judge? I befriended a quite lost looking Frenchman, and went to savour my minimal in all its twitching and popping glory.
SUNDAY
The Horrors /// Photo credit: Simon Grossi
Having stayed up long enough to enjoy Don Rimini from the safety of the tent (I could hear those wobbling basslines a mile away) it was the last push into Sunday. With more psychedelia coming in the shape of The Horrors, who chose to showcase their second album's more wall-of-noise sound rather than the B-movie punkfest of their debut. This led to less dancing and more nodding, and so thank God for the Commodore japes of Crystal Castles, whose appearance sucked the stragglers from The Horrors to add to their tent's busting bulk. With their naïve but crushing sound attracting more skinny jeans than shorts, this was a cheeky mosh in the dark lased with a predictable sweatbox of crowdsurfing youth and vigour.
Post sweat-gate it was time to get all intelligent and make a rare appearance at the main stage for the slightly legendary Aphex Twin and Hecker. Packing a shared back catalogue of greats in both the ambient and IDM stakes, this should have been a rare live to treat to behold. Unfortunately a predominantly ambient set doesn't fit with a field full of simmering end-of-festival energy, and so this wasn't really the time or place to be letting the lid off for a final blowout. So, shock horror, I left to see if the rest of the tents were actually moving around maybe just a tiny bit. It's safe to say Huoratron was, jerking and headbanging his laptop into a metallic frenzy. It's true that this guy has one synth sound, but with that being "baby-in-a-blender" it meant a good half hour of electro-mosh before the sun was shy of the horizon.
I heard 5 Elements Of Hip-Hop at various points through the evening, once again an earful of fidget was the order being spun and chopped. Mixmaster Mike was having fun so I suppose I was too, even if it was slightly at his beardy expense. Choosing to see Venetian Snares, taking into account my relative mental stability after such a relentless few days, should have been a nightmare. I won't lie; this is the soundtrack to untold atrocities. But in all the noise I could kind of appreciate what he was at least attempting to do. Fiddling with an equally scary arsenal of machines, these were some pretty jitter-inducing noises. The kind of stuff that, after about ten minutes, I thought I'd leave to the jerking pale creatures who'd quietly surrounded me to enjoy.
Despite maybe not having the quality or volume of bands I've previously experienced at Dour (did someone say recession?), this was a cracking DIY festival of the highest order. Sure, maybe there was a little more sponsorship this year, but the level of organisation and the easy-going nature of pretty much everyone at this festival means you're guaranteed a good time. With its fields full of genuine music and festival fans, unlike football-shirt-fests Benicassim and Exit, Dour is an eye-opener for anyone yet to get their festival kicks beyond the Channel.