Page 21 - Zone Magazine Issue 012

awakenings festival 2016 [netherlands]
It seems quite hard to imagine 60,000 techno revellers venturing to a two day festival in Amsterdam's Spaarnwoude district, but year in year out this is exactly what Awakenings Festival have managed to bring, and like the previous years, this one sold out ridiculously quick.
With a line up over the two days that reads like a who is who of techno, with arenas catering from soft and chilled to the absolutely frenetic, this year in particular was set to impress.
Kicking off on Saturday, we ventured to see Edge Of Motion play a rocking set that seemed to really set the mood greatly at 3 PM on a Saturday afternoon, but what do you expect from one of the pioneers of the techno sound in Holland, producing absolute anthems such as 'Set Up 707' and more! Splitting our entertainment for the next hour, we spent half the time listening to Marcel Dettmann play some meandering slower cuts before hearing The Advent and Industrialyzer deliver what they do best, with some dark, rolling and broody percussive numbers that really hit the spot!
It was a tough choice to make to split between Dax J and Dave Clarke, but the Baron himself won for the majority of their set times, throwing
in new releases by Slam, DJ Bone and many others including a couple tracks that we promoted at iCan Promo and boy oh boy did his set go right off! We caught the last half hour of Dax who played a lot of his own numbers that worked effectively before dropping Plastikman's mix of System 7's wicked Alphawave! Fair play!
Favourites of mine, AnD delivered as expected, playing lots of cuts from yesteryear from the likes of Mike Humphries, Simon Dred, Circuit Breaker, and some new bits including tracks from Perc and Truss and Ritzi Lee's single Traction on Mord. Definitely managed to make me work up a sweat and a half!
We ventured over to see a small portion of Ben Klock's set which felt quite slow in comparison to AnD but still did the damage, before wanting a harder fix missioning over to see CLR boss Chris Liebing rock it out! Choice cut for me was Dense & Pika's mix of Planet E by Tiga, what a way to round off the evening.
Sunday started late due to an overindulgence of dutch Heineken on the Saturday evening resulting in a 4 AM bedtime. By the time we surfaced we caught the last half of Dave Clarke's second set, this time back to back with DJ Bone, and then ventured to see Chris Liebing again,
however we could only watch from the back due to the fact it was so busy in there!
Jeff Mills was a particular highlight on the Sunday feasting a Drum Machine special alongside some wicked mixing, and some awesome acidic numbers thrown in that I am still trying to find the name of now, while Sven Vath proved he still has it, playing all vinyl and mixing in Konstantin Sibold's Mutter, which I know well will be one of the tunes of the year for me!
We caught the last half hour of Len Faki's set, where he decided to end on longstanding classic 'Insomnia' by Faithless. Rounding off the weekend was the second set for both Marcel Dettmann and Ben Klock who decided to play back to back. This was a much livelier ending than we anticipated and the place went mental. I have said it before a couple of years running now but I will definitely be back next year!
Connect:
http://www.awakeningsfestival.nl/
report/
Words By Louk
ESSENTIALDANCEMUSIC 21