Outlook: Exodus to Croatia

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  • Though it was organised by a team of British promoters, Outlook: Exodus to Croatia was far from a typical British music festival. It took place not in a muddy field but in a beach-side club on the island of Pag, off Croatia's coast. Though it celebrated dubstep, something of a British creation, it also paid tribute to dubstep's exotic roots, namely Jamaican reggae, dub and dancehall. The main action took place at the Aquarius club, a large coast-facing venue with an outdoor stage as well as a sizeable indoor dance floor and DJ booth. The rest happened on a series of boat parties—two per day, leaving from the bay outside the main site—which cost extra but were well worth the price. Some punters camped at a site about two miles from the club, but most stayed in apartments in the nearby town of Novalja. With a few notable exceptions—Skream, Caspa and Rusko were absent—everyone from the world of dubstep was in attendance. Benga, Digital Mystikz, Loefah, Hatcha, Martyn, Pinch and N-Type, to name but a few, were testing Outlook's powerful sound system beneath the Croatian sun. In terms of bass weight, the festival delivered everything that could be expected of a carnival of dubstep. Loefah's set stood out as an example of how to extract maximum bass pressure from a given complement of speakers. Stenchman's antics were also well appreciated, while Walsh, N-Type's co-host on the regular Rinse FM dubstep shows, helped to prove he is worthy of much greater exposure. The rest of dubstep's elite were almost uniformly excellent, testifying to the depth of talent in this young but confident genre. Dubstep's roots were represented by veteran Jamaican reggae masters The Twinkle Brothers, who headlined the outdoor stage on Sunday, with support from UK dub band Zion Train. Leeds-based sound system The Iration Steppas headlined the same stage on Saturday, while Gentleman's Dub Club, a young, white reggae ensemble fronted by one of the festival's organisers performing a memorable set on the Friday. The contribution of an influential minority of drum & bass and hip hop artists was also welcome, though some of the most interesting drum & bass DJs found themselves relegated to last in the ordering—hence both Lynx and Commix were to be seen taking the stage at 5 AM. dBridge, one of the most innovative producers around at the moment had an early set on Sunday, followed by labelmates Instra:mental. There was hip-hop too, with UK figurehead Jehst delivered a typically charismatic set on Sunday evening alongside Foreign Beggars. The festival was predominantly attended by English speakers, most of them from Britain. Some local Croatians could be found circling the club in the evening, looking slightly bemused in the face of an unending sub bass assault that must have contrasted strangely with the Aquarius club's usual line-up, which more often features the likes of Tiesto. It was a huge effort to bring nearly 2,000 punters, almost 200 artists and an entire sound system all the way to Croatia. By all accounts, some had nightmarish journeys. A coach taking festival goers from the UK to Pag suffered a series of mishaps. It was held up at three borders—twice for drug infringements, and once when it was discovered that a Ghanaian passenger lacked the required visa. (Incredibly, the other passengers and driver agreed to smuggle him into Croatia in the luggage hold. They succeeded.) The journey, predicted to last 28 hours, took 42. Once they were there however, the audience's experience definitely lived up to expectations. Technical problems were infrequent and the sound system was excellent, providing the necessary bass weight without losing clarity in the highs and mids. Though the sunshine was intermittent—one night we were treated to a rain storm of almost tropical proportions—this at least gave the English punters the chance to complain about the weather. The festival was a meeting-place for dubstep, and provides an important snapshot of the 2009 scene. It is a point at which the music is teetering on entering the mainstream. We've seen dubstep reach number two in the UK charts thanks to Skream's remix of La Roux's "In for the Kill." The music is even on Snoop Dogg's radar: Note his rather uninspired rap version of "Eastern Jam" by Chase & Status, available online. Indeed, one of the dreadlocked Croatian hippies recruited to act as a guide to newly arrived festival goers could be heard complaining that the crowd was too trendy, too overground and too commercial for his tastes. Perhaps in the future, Outlook: Exodus to Croatia will come to represent the crucial rally before dubstep's vanguard pushed the music to the world's attention.
RA