Blackfield Festival, Germany — June 20 and 21, 2009 — Viva Music review

On June 20 and 21, 2009 I had the immense plea­sure to be a spe­cial guest of the Black­field Fes­ti­val, Ger­many. I rep­re­sented www.darkwave.ro, one of the online webzines ded­i­cated to the fans of dark music in Roma­nia. For more info on the fes­ti­val, please access http://www.blackfield-festival.de/ and def­i­nitely book your tick­ets in advance to go to the next one in June 2010!

Photo Gal­leries:

I was sort of pre­pared for what a Ger­man electro/dark/Goth fes­ti­val has to offer after going to the Wave Gotik Tre­f­fen. I knew what to expect, I knew that Ger­mans are won­der­ful peo­ple and that it would be easy to find my way around. And def­i­nitely have a lot of fun and take mil­lions of pic­tures. Spe­cial thanks to Peddy Sadighi for invit­ing me. Con­grat­u­la­tions for a per­fectly orga­nized sec­ond edi­tion of the Black­field Fes­ti­val. The bands’ per­for­mances were some­thing to remem­ber for the rest of my life. The per­for­mances were ener­getic and 100% professional.

The atmos­phere and location

Absolutely amaz­ing! I felt goose bumps for HOURS on end both at the actual fes­ti­val and the warm up party. More infor­ma­tion on the actual per­for­mances of the bands is avail­able on www.reflectionsofdarkness.com.

The music of the 25+ bands was some­thing I can­not describe in reg­u­lar words. I guess the clos­est words to describe the con­certs would be: uplift­ing, aggres­sive, excit­ing, intrigu­ing, mil­i­tary march-like, loud, insti­gat­ing, ener­getic, spe­cial as in closer to senses and mind than other types of music per­for­mances. Each band per­formed for about 45–60 min­utes. No more than 15 min­utes were needed to change the sets between the performances.

The loca­tion is a large amphithe­ater with thou­sands of seats, with a per­fect view from every side. The stage is cov­ered with a large tent like roof, and the Rhine flows right behind the stage. The pho­tos taken from the upper side of the amphithe­ater are, thus, absolutely spectacular.

The audi­ence

I was very impressed by the audi­ence, who just kept danc­ing for 2 days! 12 hours a day, thou­sands of peo­ple enjoyed every band and every song. I am one of the lucky peo­ple who have had the chance to see many live con­certs in my life, and I strongly believe that live con­certs are one of the best expe­ri­ences in someone’s life. Well, the Black­fiel­d­iens are some­thing spe­cial! The energy, enthu­si­asm, open­ness and obvi­ously excel­lent phys­i­cal shape (it’s not easy to dance 12 hours, dressed in black, with a lot of acces­sories and usu­ally wear­ing 5 kilo black boots in sum­mer!) are the things I’ll never for­get. I guess the prox­im­ity of shops, kiosks and actual stage, as well as the excel­lent orga­ni­za­tion of the fes­ti­val made things easy. The food court, shops and stage were close and every­thing was at hand. You could even buy cig­a­rettes from paddlers.

The par­tic­i­pants were devoted fans of the industrial/electro/dark/goth music and fash­ion. One obser­va­tion though. At WGT I must admit that the par­tic­i­pants were more ori­ented towards the “Gothic fash­ion” than at Black­field. Here I noticed more offi­cial band T-shirts than in Leipzig. The most pop­u­lar T-shirts were Front 242, VNV Nation Project Pitch­fork, Santa Hates You, Apop­tygma Berz­erk, End of Green, Soli­tary Exper­i­ments, Rot­er­sand, Frozen Plasma, Depeche Mode (:X), and, last but not least, the offi­cial Black­field Fes­ti­val T-shirt. While at WGT I was impressed by the incred­i­ble Gothic out­fits, at Black­field I was more impressed by the danc­ing and indus­trial atmosphere.

The CD’s for sale

A won­der­ful sur­prise for the Ger­man bands (I bet!), and at the same time a slight per­sonal dis­ap­point­ment was the fact that I had to lit­er­ally hunt down the newly released albums of VNV Nation, Diary of Dreams, Project Pitch­fork, the solo album of Felix Marc (Frozen Plasma) and some other new releases. I talked to the ven­dors and they said that the stock of CD’s would be sold in min­utes… Good for the Ger­mans! In the end, I came home with Project Pitch­fork and Felix Marc (thank God). I was lucky enough to be there when they still had a few copies. I guess it is a mat­ter of both money and music related buy­ing habits.

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