Category Gig/Festival Reviews

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How a 20th anniversary of festival life is could be celebrated?

Sziget Festival is the winner of the best European major festival award- written on the hand passes. Idea started 20 years ago, as a small audience and band-meeting camp. Since it is thousands of young and older people biggest party in Europe every summer.

Anniversary’s lead and line-up was extremely successful, people were coming from everywhere in Europe, Italian speakers, French guys, and Holland girls everywhere. By the way Finnish flags or Portugal national symbols and German smiles also founded in the crowd. Anyway.. dust is huge, sand is twisting, but the feeling of festival life is eternal.

After three warm up days, as Metal Day with the best hard music bands from north and south, a day addressed to the great Hungari...

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Minus second day was also a kind of surprise for those, who are curious in national music history, as well-known styles, and artists from the first hits of the modern age of Sziget Festival’s organizer Hungary.

On 5th of August a whole day music fiesta celebrated the upper mentioned topic, as the song culture and history of Hungary with the top crème of music life, reminds us great hits, unforgettable moments, sounds, and legendic artists from the past, presented by current, younger-older pop-rock icons. Initiative from Gábor Presser, world-famous Hungarian musician and music producer, in 2008. Then, as Sziget Festival, Day of Hungarian Songs also celebrates an anniversary the fifth...

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DIMMU, HAMMERFALL ON THE TOP- METALDAY IN SZIGET FESTIVAL

On the first day of 20th birthday celebrated Sziget Festival, city of Budapest was thrilled by Scandinavian soul, since that day called The Metal Day…

Started in the early afternoon Sziget’s island filled up with real music lovers, waiting for the best metal artists, mostly legendically from Scandinavia. But trying to not get any one-lined stereotypes, check all the great bands out, who played fantastic gigs at that big Hungarian Metal Day. Hungarian all-music festival, called Sziget won the best European major festival award int he year, celebrated its 20th year. Every time Sziget Festival renew itself, to show something more nd more from year to year for thousands of visitors, coming to party an enermous int he middle of summer...

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The second edition of the fresh Bucharest-based Romanian festival Summer Well started not so well and ended really bad.

The lineup announced included The Stone Roses, Hurts, The Vaccines, Patrick Wolf, Wolf Gang, Zulu Winter and many others, but the joy of being able to see Hurts (again in Bucharest) and The Stone Roses for the first time in Romania soon turned into a very frustrating experience.

Let’s start with the beginning. The festival takes place in a superb location, 20 km outside Bucharest, near a 150 year old palace and all over the forest surrounding it (including a pond populated by swans and ducks). Sounds (and really is) dreamy, which is why the tagline of the event is ”a festival like a holiday”.

Last year it was great, but unfortunately this year it rained hard in Bucharest...

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Vädret: stekhett, soligt, varmt, svettigt, regnigt, blåst, blixtar, moln, kallt, fullmåne
Summering: Woodstock bjöd på allt förutom snö och storm, men mestadels 30 grader och sol 🙂

Folk: 800 000st Polacker (så långt ögat kunde nå), en och annan tysk och så några få procent svenska, vietnameser, fransmän och ryssar. Mer internationellt önskar emellertid både från civila som från ledningen.

Stämning: trevlig, glad, välkomnande, fredfull, öppen, spexig, festlig, magisk och allt annat kul man kan förknippa med en festival under namnet Woodstock. En festival som värnar om öppenfrihet och ickevåld...

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One of the good news this year was that the organization did everything in their power to keep the same ticket prices as the previous year:50€(quite cheap right?) and at the same time they continued to improve the conditions of the festival; the beer had a reasonable price (1, 5 €), there were more portable toilets, wider variety of food and drinks inside the enclosure and finally there was a box office for photographers/press/guests and best of all: the light didn’t went out on stage like last year. The Security staff was a little tight at the entrance but more tolerant/respectful and better prepared to deal with drunkards, moshers and surf-crowders.

Day 1
Enslaved
Enslaved started playing late in the afternoon, the sunset and the cold breeze of Lake Calvão made itself felt through...

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Unlike many of the UK’s festivals this year, the Cambridge Folk festival actually had good weather – there was sunshine, the site was green and grassy (rather than a muddy swamp as some festivals had), and it was lovely and warm. That sort of weather always helps put people in a good mood for a festival, and that good mood was apparent everywhere you looked.

The first thing to strike me when I arrived was the age range of people there. There were quite a few elderly people enjoying the music, as well as middle aged people, youungsters, teenagers, and lots of families with small children – the festival really does attract a mixed crowd, and the atmosphere was a really good friendly one as a result.

The arena is a small compact site with the main stage having a covered area as well as the...

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Camp Bestival is a 3-day weekend event especially catering for families since 2008, offering great music, live acts, authors, comedy and more!

The campsite opens on the Thursday giving you plenty of time to get settled and organized before the Friday starts. This is perfect for those travelling here from far away and who just want to relax the day before. Although the main event isn’t open on the Thursday, there are food stalls; toilets and the Cosy Camper shop available to ensure you have a stress-free start to your festi-holiday.

The Site:
There is a huge amount of space to camp in so you can get as close to the entrance as you wish or further away if you like quieter evenings and this year they had the option of using a Festaxi! They will drive you and your gear to whichever part of ...

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Feel the hungarian soul of rock- Hegyalja Festival, Hungary

Festival guy goes to Hungary in the end of july, checking the middle-European festival feeling, with real rockmusic, and to taste the best white-wines ever. The city of Tokaj-Hegyalja, -one of the most famous hungarian wine-territories crossed by a river- gives home for the four days party almost from 13 years, since summer of 1999.
In the festival the lead is around the harder styles, as rock and metal bugs, but following the growing interest of trends, and the world-famous hungarian Sziget Festival, they also invite alternative, and well-known legendic non-rock artists from years...

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The Marés Vivas TMN fest was celebrating this year its 10º edition so the organization decided to have 4 days of “party” instead of the usual 3. For those of you who don’t know this Portuguese festival and are too lazy to see my other poor reviews here’s what you need to know: this summer fest happens in the north of Portugal, in the other side of the Douro River, in a city called Gaia. It’s one of the biggest and cheapest festivals in Portugal if not the Cheaper (4 day ticket costing between 50€ and 60€).This festival always hosts a great variety of musical styles: Indie rock, Punk, Goth rock, pop, garage rock, funk, soul and Portuguese music as well. They’re also known for bringing top bands from the 80’s and 90’s which ultimately joins groups of all ages.

Day 1
T...