- In the early hours of Saturday morning at Festival Forte, while Rrose was playing live, I sat on a white, L-shaped monolith to take in the scene. In the distance, the techno artist's stern arrangements were beginning to surge. I was having a breather on a digital light installation, surrounded by a few dozen others sitting on the slopes of the park and some nearby sofas. We were surrounded by the saw-toothed battlements of Castelo de Montemor-O-Velho, a centuries-old fort that predates the founding of Portugal. One of its most famous episodes, a tragedy brought on by forbidden love, took place in the mid-14th century when Spanish noblewoman Inês de Castro was murdered at the behest of King Afonso IV. But not all of the monument's history is like that: techno raves were held there in the '90s, featuring Plastikman, Carl Cox and others. (Apparently, the parties ended soon after organisers and organised crime gangs began competing for space.)
As a first-time visitor to Portugal, it was hard to gauge exactly how much of that legacy looms over the festival, though the event definitely has an old school feel. There's only one stage, so the DJs have to bring their A-game. This encouraged the audience to show patience during rougher patches. On Sunday morning, for example, Kobosil began his set with 30 minutes of the sort of booming techno you'd expect him to play at Berghain. I couldn't get into the brute power of his opening section, and had I had another stage to go to, I might've drifted over to it. But once he introduced some variation, in the shape of EBM-ish vocal tracks like Simi Nah's "You Spin Me Round," Kobosil seemed to find a more natural ebb and flow. Later on, he played a Lory D-ish cut with a sour arpeggio that ended up being one of my favourites of the whole festival.
Roughly 24 hours earlier, Helena Hauff played what many were calling the defining set of Forte. Mixing EBM, acid, Belgian new beat and Surgeon-style techno, she summoned a raw sense of fun from the acute acid contortions of Ege Bam Yasi's "Sponge" and Gesloten Cirkel's "Zombiemaschine." The other acts I caught on Friday night were also excellent. The first 20 minutes of Ancient Methods' live set, which included a rhythm stirred out of clashing swords and stampeding hooves, swung between intensity and comedy. During the last 15 minutes of Rrose, I was surprised to see the crowd—normally so laid-back—really going for it during her euphoric coda. TRADE, the duo of Surgeon and Blawan, wrung rich analogue sound and whipping grooves from their modular setup. I was, for the most part, rooted to the spot on Friday night.
Nevertheless, the festival site was a pleasure to explore. Through the metal gate of the Santa Maria De Alcacova church, you could see a morphing screen suspended two feet from the floor between slender spiral pillars. A few yards away in the park, 20 large, square paving stones were lit in random sequence by an overhead strobe rigged to a metal frame. One 20-something guy in a red T-shirt tested a paving stone with one foot, as if checking for boobytraps, while others hopped between the slabs in an attempt to keep up with the lights. In the open-air ruins of the Palácio Das Infantas, a royal residence that held court meetings and ceremonies, pixels and picture fragments were projected on the long glass wall of a tea house. (I later discovered the distorted images were sourced from TV commercials—seats were deliberately arranged around the installation to mimic a lounge.)
Festival Forte takes a sizeable gamble on the tastes of its audience, a friendly mix of Portuguese, French and Spanish nationals. It's not strictly a techno festival, but it's also not a party with something for everyone. The pace of the festival, dictated largely by helter-skelter techno selections, tended to ease up in the more experimental phases of the timetable. Cabaret Voltaire, Ben Frost, Orphx and Ancient Methods gave Forte some welcome light and shade, while the elastic grooves of Sebastian Mullaert and Ulf Eriksson's melodic live set provided some contemplative moments. As demanding as the programme was, the dance floor was almost always busy.
On a few occasions, when Forte presented mellower sounds, it faltered slightly. Following Cabaret Voltaire's superlative AV show, which interspersed news and documentary footage with ugly bass spasms and industrial beats, Apparat's DJ set was a pleasant but predictable medley of house and Moderat standards. I wasn't entirely sold on Michael Mayer's set, either, which closed the festival at around 10:30 PM on Sunday, ending more than 24 hours of continuous music. It's always great to hear Outlander's "Vamp" and "Blush" by Midland, but a couple of cheesy vocal tracks nudged me away from the party atmosphere.
At around 8 PM on Sunday, before I went to see Mayer play, I watched the sunset. About 40 others faced westward as the last vestige of yellow sank into the distant treeline. The coffee stall by the church was shut, and two guys manning the empanada stand were marking time. The installations had been switched off. Forte was winding down, but the party was still going strong. On the dance floor, a crowd of 400 grew to nearly double that within the hour, and by 9:30 PM it seemed that everyone was ready to head into a fourth night. That the festival ended an hour later might've seemed, for those that remained, like the latest tragedy to hit the castle grounds.
Festival Forte takes a sizeable gamble on the tastes of its audience, a friendly mix of Portuguese, French and Spanish nationals. It's not strictly a techno festival, but it's also not a party with something for everyone. The pace of the festival, dictated largely by helter-skelter techno selections, tended to ease up in the more experimental phases of the timetable. Cabaret Voltaire, Ben Frost, Orphx and Ancient Methods gave Forte some welcome light and shade, while the elastic grooves of Sebastian Mullaert and Ulf Eriksson's melodic live set provided some contemplative moments. As demanding as the programme was, the dance floor was almost always busy. On a few occasions, when Forte presented mellower sounds, it faltered slightly. Following Cabaret Voltaire's superlative AV show, which interspersed news and documentary footage with ugly bass spasms and industrial beats, Apparat's DJ set was a pleasant but predictable medley of house and Moderat standards. I wasn't entirely sold on Michael Mayer's set, either, which closed the festival at around 10:30 PM on Sunday, ending more than 24 hours of continuous music. It's always great to hear Outlander's "Vamp" and "Blush" by Midland, but a couple of cheesy vocal tracks nudged me away from the party atmosphere.
At around 8 PM on Sunday, before I went to see Mayer play, I watched the sunset. About 40 others faced westward as the last vestige of yellow sank into the distant treeline. The coffee stall by the church was shut, and two guys manning the empanada stand were marking time. The installations had been switched off. Forte was winding down, but the party was still going strong. On the dance floor, a crowd of 400 grew to nearly double that within the hour, and by 9:30 PM it seemed that everyone was ready to head into a fourth night. That the festival ended an hour later might've seemed, for those that remained, like the latest tragedy to hit the castle grounds.