- Intergalactic FM Festival is unlike most electronic music festivals. There are no timetables, few rules and no hierarchies of any kind. Artists are required to turn up at 7 PM on the day of their gig and the schedule is then put together on the fly. To the average promoter it's madness, but Intergalactic FM (IFM) chief Ferenc E. van der Sluijs, AKA I-F, wouldn't have it any other way. "I have more trouble shopping for groceries than doing this," he told me on Saturday night, as host venue PIP Den Haag was gearing up for its second 13-hour marathon. Van der Sluijs was dressed in a mismatched sweatsuit, cap and glasses, which hung round his neck on a gold chain. He had a crumpled piece of paper in one hand and a red marker in the other—the hallowed schedule, as it turned out—and was zigzagging tirelessly between the rooms and the merch stand, stopping only to chat with people. He was in his element, totally unflappable, and this weekend we were all pawns in his game.
IFM was born from the vacuum left by Cybernetic Broadcasting System (CBS), which went off the air in July 2008. For a tight-knit circle of freaks, CBS was the place to hear long-lost gems and discover all kinds of obscure music. But after five years, the community had stopped growing. It didn't take long for its successor, IFM, to emerge, this time with multiple channels offering various strains of music (rather than just a single continuous stream). It was no longer the sole charge of van der Sluijs, either, but collectively run by Hotmix Foundation, a mail-order turned non-profit organisation. (It carries the name of van der Sluijs' seminal record store, which was a key meeting point in The Hague throughout the '90s).
Over the past ten years, IFM's remit has steadily expanded, and so too has its family of freaks, from the artists affiliated with the radio station to the audience that regularly tunes in across the globe. The recent addition of Panama Racing Club, a physical streaming space (and TV channel) based in the garage of PIP, has played a big part. "It's given the station public value," said PIP cofounder Steven van Lummel, who has been an I-F and CBS fan since the beginning.
PIP and IFM are an ideological match. They're both democratic, rebellious and charmingly uncouth, which explains why PIP has served as the festival's home since the first inconspicuous edition in 2010. Back then, Van Lummel recalls Gesloten Cirkel playing to "literally Legowelt, Guy [Tavares], two or three other Crème guys, and staff." This year, the enigmatic artist was one of the most anticipated acts on the bill. He performed a headsy live set on Saturday to a packed room—Legowelt, Tavares and Crème chief DJ TLR were all in attendance.
The lack of a timetable was, admittedly, frustrating. If you wanted to see a specific act, you first had to know what they looked like and then you had to have the guts to go up and ask what time they were playing. Luckily, most of the artists hung out onsite all weekend and were extremely approachable—a refreshing antithesis to the jet-set DJ culture pervasive in clubland today. Many artists were as keen to see each other play as the punters were. I saw Cosmic Force, for example, cutting mad shapes to Electronome's sped-up electro and ghetto house at Panama Racing Club, before delivering his own live electro set later on in PIP's "mirror room." I had to grab van der Sluijs during Cosmic Force's set to ask who he was, so exuberant was his performance (to say nothing of his music).
Orgue Electronique were another live highlight. Brian Schijf, the brainchild of the project, was joined by Fre2k from SEER Radio—who are IFM regulars—and together they banged out fast Chicago acid behind a spaghetti-like mop of wires and machines. As for the DJs, sets ranged from the on-point warm-up selections of Ian Martin, host of IFM's SEER show since 2009, to the scuzzy Bunker techno of Berlin-based Naks, whose Dreams Of Neon parties are streamed on the IFM TV channel Neon. Naturally, there was more Italo, acid and electro than you could shake a stick at. But there were lots of other non-West Coast sounds, too, from the alt-rock and musical subversions of Guy Tavares, to cumbia and tropical from another IFM host, Edgar Nevermoo, plus spacey soundtrack music in the daytime and even a blast of drum & bass.
The weekend's sonic eclecticism hit a zenith during Lake Haze and Identified Patient's euphoric back-to-back on Saturday. The pair moved from Hi-NRG disco, Italo cheese and the brutal pop of Nitzer Ebb to caustic gargling electro and back again, garnering feverish screams and wolf whistles at every sharp turn. Their zero-fucks-given approach pretty much summed up IFM Festival (and radio) to a tee. As two second-generation artists carrying the torch for today's West Coast Sound, their performance also doubled as a statement about the durability of The Hague scene and its resolute lack of nostalgia. The past wasn't vaunted at IFM Festival because the music played there has only been moving forwards since the late '80s. The oldest scene in the Netherlands is still battling on, kicking against the man and producing some of the best electronic music in the galaxy. Come to Intergalactic FM Festival to experience the real Dutch underground. No bullshitters allowed.
Photo credit /
Pierre Zylstra
PIP and IFM are an ideological match. They're both democratic, rebellious and charmingly uncouth, which explains why PIP has served as the festival's home since the first inconspicuous edition in 2010. Back then, Van Lummel recalls Gesloten Cirkel playing to "literally Legowelt, Guy [Tavares], two or three other Crème guys, and staff." This year, the enigmatic artist was one of the most anticipated acts on the bill. He performed a headsy live set on Saturday to a packed room—Legowelt, Tavares and Crème chief DJ TLR were all in attendance. The lack of a timetable was, admittedly, frustrating. If you wanted to see a specific act, you first had to know what they looked like and then you had to have the guts to go up and ask what time they were playing. Luckily, most of the artists hung out onsite all weekend and were extremely approachable—a refreshing antithesis to the jet-set DJ culture pervasive in clubland today. Many artists were as keen to see each other play as the punters were. I saw Cosmic Force, for example, cutting mad shapes to Electronome's sped-up electro and ghetto house at Panama Racing Club, before delivering his own live electro set later on in PIP's "mirror room." I had to grab van der Sluijs during Cosmic Force's set to ask who he was, so exuberant was his performance (to say nothing of his music).
Orgue Electronique were another live highlight. Brian Schijf, the brainchild of the project, was joined by Fre2k from SEER Radio—who are IFM regulars—and together they banged out fast Chicago acid behind a spaghetti-like mop of wires and machines. As for the DJs, sets ranged from the on-point warm-up selections of Ian Martin, host of IFM's SEER show since 2009, to the scuzzy Bunker techno of Berlin-based Naks, whose Dreams Of Neon parties are streamed on the IFM TV channel Neon. Naturally, there was more Italo, acid and electro than you could shake a stick at. But there were lots of other non-West Coast sounds, too, from the alt-rock and musical subversions of Guy Tavares, to cumbia and tropical from another IFM host, Edgar Nevermoo, plus spacey soundtrack music in the daytime and even a blast of drum & bass. The weekend's sonic eclecticism hit a zenith during Lake Haze and Identified Patient's euphoric back-to-back on Saturday. The pair moved from Hi-NRG disco, Italo cheese and the brutal pop of Nitzer Ebb to caustic gargling electro and back again, garnering feverish screams and wolf whistles at every sharp turn. Their zero-fucks-given approach pretty much summed up IFM Festival (and radio) to a tee. As two second-generation artists carrying the torch for today's West Coast Sound, their performance also doubled as a statement about the durability of The Hague scene and its resolute lack of nostalgia. The past wasn't vaunted at IFM Festival because the music played there has only been moving forwards since the late '80s. The oldest scene in the Netherlands is still battling on, kicking against the man and producing some of the best electronic music in the galaxy. Come to Intergalactic FM Festival to experience the real Dutch underground. No bullshitters allowed. Photo credit / Pierre Zylstra