‘It’s really time to go to the […] To go! ”, The Hague rapper Mula B shouts in the bright green drug stamp of Lowlands in Biddinghuizen. The crazy audience has long since erupted in a steaming Moshpit.
The early Friday evening in the Bravo tent started as expected: after the Amsterdam rapper Gotu Jim, who once stood in the small X-ray but is now even too big for the big Heineken internship, Mula B brings the sun out of the sky with his track ‘Coke in the sale’. If then also Boaz and Milo van Goldband jumping up and thousands of shirtless people ‘no longer of you’ will sing along with full breasts, you think: here all the powder is already faded. And it’s only eight o’clock. Fortunately it will turn out later that that was a misunderstanding. Kruit comes in all shapes and sizes.
The Lowlands festival has increasingly focused on night programming in recent years. By closing the site around the main stage around midnight, the public is brought together on the large square around the four characteristic chimneys of Armadillow, the 24-hour tent. In previous years that could sometimes feel like a light switch: first with the light on, then cut: light out. Day, cut, night. The DJs that were programmed at night played hard and industrial techno, at a rapid pace. A trend then, but above all a hard contrast with the bands during the day.
Visitors to Lowlands.
Photo Simon Lenskens
Still life with beer and bitterbal.
Shadow and hammocks: perfect place to relax.
Euphoric atmosphere on Lowlands when the night falls.
Photos Simon Lenskens
That is now completely different: people want to feel the euphoria more at night, people want to dance more. The program provides well with that wish, with a more gradual transition: Whether it is the warm soul of Odeal (9:00 pm in the India), the classic rock at Queens of the Stone Age (8:15 pm in the Alpha) or the grouse postpunk at the Rotterdam Tramhaus (23:45 in the Heineken), everywhere.
Outfit change
It is eagerly used by festival -goers for an outfit change by festival goers. This last day of the heat wave means that it is unexpectedly cold early. The wide shirts, short adidas pants and cowboy boots are exchanged for an just as detailed composed night suit. At Lowlands everyone looks perfect. It is good to be good for the void on the Bravo site that Job Jobse & Ki/Ki will almost start – after the state, The Opposites and Goldband was once again allowed to close a Dutch act the huge Alpha. At a top time slot: from half past ten to midnight.
“Yo Lowlands, who is looking forward to it?”, Kiki Wesselo (Ki/Ki) from Harderwijk shouts with audible nerves in her voice from the stage in the Alpha. People with shirts with ‘J’Adore Kiki Job’ in glitter letters on the entire field raise their luminous totem posts in the sky of enthusiasm. The in advance high expectations are exactly. Opening track ‘Yo Yo Yo’ from Pegassi, immediately makes it clear that the set will be a dance-karaoke, which goes for total ecstasy.
Eight stroboscope towers with built-in smoke machines color the terrain around Red-White, a large Peace Now-Flag wavers on either side of the stage and dozens of lasers shoot in all directions above the crowd. Ki/Ki soon reduces the energy with its signature trance edits from Greatest Hits As ‘Don’t You Want Me’ and ‘Sandstorm’, her ‘Fatima Yamaha Remix’, and even a Bubbling Edit of Tiësto’s ‘Lethal Industry’.
The audience lay before the set started was already lascivious in the ropes to embrace all those recognizable sing -alongs full of love. Fortunately, Jobse brings some unpredictability and tension: a long, nostalgic wink with Sonique’s ‘Feels So Good’, and the rave hit ‘FTS’ from Showtek just give the right amount of salt and pepper to send the Lowlands public in good courage in the rest of the night. Willem van The Opposites did a ghost Word – also unexpectedly: “Every kick, every laser, this is not an escape, this is reality. I live for the night, I live for Lowlands, Baby!”, It sounds just before ‘The First Rebirth’ by Jones & Stephenson makes the set.
Gently glow
That euphoric atmosphere continues to the British Joy Orbison who opens his set in the Bravo with Groovy House, under a soft glow of Philips Hue-like lamps in all colors. Even the crackling Eurotrance by Danny L. Harle in the X-ray is so cheerful that the night feels sunny. The highlight takes place a lot later in the India tent. When the Arnhem duo Chamos pops the energetic track ‘gangcio’ by Peterblue, women climb on the shoulders of men, a few Palestinian Keffiyeh-Jaals are hurled up and a Kurdish flag hosts it on the audience. The duo with Kurdish carrots mixes ‘Shik Shak Shok’ by Hassan Abu El Seoud from 1974, an Egyptian feminist song, with ‘All of the Lights’ by Green Neon DJ, the accelerated Tick Remix. A sample of worlds.
Deep in the night the Bravo is just as packed as during the day. The British DJ and producer Sammy Virji moves smoothly from cheerful grime to hard dubstep (his own ‘bogeyman’) and softer, classic house (an edit of ‘The Hitman’ by Mervellous Cain). He runs effortlessly and super happy, while enjoying a coke Zero. He is the only one, the rest of the room is on the pills. But where this time (around half past three), last year still felt grim, the atmosphere is now striking light and cozy.
This year, the DJs seems to have been searching less in obscure record trays for niche tracks that nobody knows: instead, it is all about classics and hits, smartly mixed with diaspora influences and new, euphoric edits. Less difficult, more pleasant. That could sound like criticism, but it is also nice that the day was not forgotten by the night.
At night the audience gathered around the Armadillow, the 24-hour tent on Lowlands.
Photo Simon Lenskens