various locations, Utrecht (NL)
The canals in my hometown Utrecht looked somewhat darker than usual. The reason was the second edition of the Summer Darkness festival. During three days concerts were held in Tivoli, De Helling, Ekko and even in the Jans Church, with many bands that seldomly play in the Netherlands. About 3000 visitors were expected at the festival, which starts to resemble a ‘Little Leipzig’.
Driving force behind ‘SD’ is Kees de Brouwer aka Cybercase aka DJ X-X-X, who has been running the succesful Cyberia-parties in Ekko for ten years now, together with other events elsewhere in the country. Previously he already managed to get stages at the Metropolis and Lowlands festivals, dedicated to ‘cybergothic’, as Kees calls the modern, often electronic variant of ’80’s gothic, electro (EBM) and industrial.
For Summer Darkness Cybercase and the venues Ekko and Tivoli joined forces to organize a festival which is unique for The Netherlands, where gothic is usually limited to small underground parties for insiders.
Major booking agency Mojo is also involved in Summer Darkness, which becomes clear by the now popular gothic metal bands in the line-up, like After Forever. The result is a festival with a large array of musical styles: apart from ‘cybergothic’ and gothic metal, you could also hear traditional folk or experimental ambient.
One has to make choices at a festival with multiple stages. Friday night I wanted to save my forces, so I only attended the music in Ekko for a few hours, to get into the mood. The venue was very crowded, so we had to wait outside for a while. Therefore we missed the American Terrorfakt. I heard it was quite heavy rhythmic, monotonous industrial noise, with very bloody, shocking video images
To my surprise I quite enjoyed Pzychobitch. Danceable industrial techno, at times even trancy, with a charismatic female singer who had a punky voice. This caused the first movement of the festival for me.
Then it was time for one-man force PAL. For years one of the pioneers of the German industrial label Ant-Zen. Without a doubt a musician with an interesting catalogue, as you can hear on the recent compilation ‘Retro’. Minimal but effective rhythms and sounds, a cold atmosphere and interesting samples. Live the act is less relevant: PAL puts on a tape, drinks a lot of beer, ‘sings’ on a few tracks and hits the electronic drumpads, though I’m not sure what the added value is. Nevertheless, his music is suited to make the audience move… We skipped the afterparty, Saturday would be a long day.
Saturday started in the Jans Church. Visitors of the weekly flowermarket nearby will have looked surprised to the visitors dressed in black of a special ‘service’. Two folkbands gave an acoustic performance in the church. Omnia (‘neo-Celtic paganfolk’) from Utrecht played a succesful homegame. The trio plays various string instruments, flutes, harp, percussion and didgeridoo. Tranquil harpsongs are alternated with ritual drumming pieces. Their music is varied, with Irish and Breton folksongs, medieval and pre-christian songs amongst others. With their ‘pagan’ character they repeatedly mocked the location where they were playing. A strong side of Omnia is their stage presentation: with a lot of humour they (especially their frontman) chat between the songs.
After Omnia played the befriended German band Faun. Excellent musicians who enjoy playing a lot. In a rather tranquil set they combined well-known medieval melodies with German folky pieces. At the end a few songs were played by ‘Faunomnia’, meaning all musicians of both bands at the same time om stage, which further enhanced the festive spirit. By the way, both Faun and Omnia played in the same weekend also at the Folkwoods-festival in Eindhoven.
Later in the afternoon we moved ourselves to Tivoli. The French cultband Rosa Crvx had very special stage equipment, which will have given the roadies nightmares. Except for a grand piano and a double-bass, they used a battery of automatic, self-playing (!) drums and a construction with 10 church bells! Furthermore two gigantic flags were waved, they employed video projections and there was a special performance with a naked couple doing a ritual sand dance. All these visual stimuli distracted a little from the music, which was pleasantly havy and bombastic, though somewhat monotonous. Besides the voice and the guitar playing of the frontman was not really my cup of tea. Nevertheless a special experience.
After this we were treated to the second performance this day of Faun. In the bigger Tivoli they chose for a more energetic approach. An additional member created danceable rhythms out of an electronic device. In combination with the medieval instruments they created a cheerful sound, which was very well appreciated by the visitors.
Strangily enough a heavy cyber-electro band was planned between the medieval spheres, namely Combichrist. We decided to have a diner break and we returned in time for the ultimate partyband Corvus Corax, who already played a lot of festivals. Imagine about seven muscular half-naked guys, who are playing ridiculously large drums and a battery of bagpipes, everything with murderous speed. The result is a sort of medieval hardcore, which is very energetic. It bores me after a few tracks though, because they are not very varied. The crowded Tivoli enjoyed it a lot though, and the audienced cheered and applauded at the command of the not very modest bandmembers.
Then we could choose from various afterparties. We chose to visit De Helling, because there wer nightly concerts there with acts from the German label Black Rain. We only saw the last bit of Lamia from Argentina: an original mixture of electro and a opera-like female singer. It reminded me a little of Die Form.
After Lamia their countrymen Kutna Hora played. They started a bit hesitating with their mixture of folk and wave, but gradullay they became more convincing, with some fine tracks at the end. A nice detail was the presence of the singer of Lamia on one track.
Novalis played a solid set of acoustic folky tracks. Just a pity that they are a bit static on stage, because their singer/guitarist is sitting on a chair the whole time.
The Dutch Predella Avant offered more fireworks in the middle of the night. Bombastic music with three tight drummers, a militant atmospher, industrial sounds combined with monumental classical samplesand both male and female vocals. I missed the black & white movies a bit, which they usually project in the background. Not many people had energy left for the closing War of Roses dancenight with folky and industrial sounds, so the venue closed a bit earlier than planned. But the day had been long enough already…
On Sunday the most interesting line-up was to be found in Ekko, with four acts from the Swedish label Cold Meat Industry. Because Saturday night ended pretty late, it cost a bit of effort to be present again near the stage on early Sunday afternoon. But Sanctum presented their new album ‘Let’s eat’ and succeeded very well to wake me up: a very dynamic sound, with both heavy loud pieces and deeply emotional spheric elements. The two singers got rid of all their frustrations ina sort of scream-therapy. A very intense and convincing performance.
Coph Nia was even darker, but in a more calm and ritual manner. Singer Aldenon has a lovely heavy voice, a bit like Michael Gira (Swans), which he used to declamate Crowleyian texts and the like. Perhaps he shoudl actually ‘sing’ more often, which sounded pretty nice in the entertaining cover of ‘Sympathy for the devil’. The live drummer was also convincing. A a pleasant surprise was the female singer who contributed vocals to a few songs and who also played a special instrument called ‘Ocean Harp’. During the harsher songs she almost looked frightened to the vocal eruptions of Aldenon, like in ‘Holy War’.
In Slaughter Natives was on paper the most known and legendary act, which also released material on the experimental Amsterdam label Staalplaat. Though this orchestral industrial act usually sounds hard and bombastic, this time it started a bit slow. The stage presentation is also not very dynamic, consisting only of the (somewhat frightening looking) singer and a VJ (?) sitting behind a laptop. Towards the end things got more dynamic with some ISN classics, causing a bot more movement in the audience.
The dark ambient of Raison d’?tre, one of the many projects of Peter Andersson, was the finishing touch of this afternoon in Ekko. Many people started to feel their legs and sat down to enjoy the atmospheric soundscapes, complete with projections of rusty old ship and factories.
The real die-hards will have gathered in Tivoli on Sunday night. For me it had been enough meanwhile. After Corvus Corax I was not craving for the medieval festivities of In Extremo anymore. The now very popular gothic metal of After Forever was also not high on my wishlist. In retrospect Summer Darkness was a very varied festival, with enough worthwhile performances to call it a success. Very pleasant to have such a festival in my neighbourhood for a change, so that I can reach all venues on foot or by bike. I expect that there will come a third edition…
