Melt Festival – A success for techno fans

Melt Festival – A success for techno fans

23 July, 2008 | 3.39PM

• Section: Music News Topics: Beatport Blog
• Written by: Amanda Connon-Unda

This year’s Melt Festival was the most profitable in its 11-year history, with far more international exposure than it’s had, plus an extra day of events.

It was rumored that in past years Melt would call up agents to book acts, whereas this year those same bookers were calling Melt to try and get their artists scheduled, and due to the festival’s popularity, Melt had to deny some acts that wanted the chance to play.

This year Melt also spent its biggest budget yet, and this can be easily reflected by the calibre of talent (The full line-up is here:
Melt 08 program).

With names like Bjork, and with the speculation that she might have been flown in via helicopter to the event, it’s no wonder that the budget was large.

The organizers of the festival were understandably feeling pressure to ensure that they could make their budgeted money back.

From what we heard the festival organizers managed to succeed, which is highly deserved, after growing the festival for over a decade.

Pre-sale tickets were rumored to be very good this year, and mostly indie rock music fans were the largest group of buyers.

Techno fans are notorious for spending money spontaneously in the moment to attend events, but by all accounts on the festival grounds, there seemed to be many techno enthusiasts in attendance despite the rain during the entire weekend.

Pan/Tone commented on Supermayer’s set on Friday evening, saying, “I liked it. The album was for home-listening, but hearing the music live was a good thing to hear at the time. Rain was a perfect backdrop”.

No doubt, Supermayer’s music sounded good and livened up the cloudy atmosphere.

Compared to many other festivals in Germany, we’re told that Melt is one of the best.

Other festivals such as Fusion, SMS, and Nature One, which is very commercial, do quite well in Germany, and on the other hand, there are smaller underground festivals which only a few hundred people know about.

For techno crowds, Melt is the place to go, since it has a host of electronic music acts, unlike some of the exclusively rock festivals.

What’s perhaps most unique is that attendees came for the quality of the line-up and people moved and mixed amongst themselves freely between rock and techno stages during the festival.

Beatportal caught up with a few attendees to hear about their perspectives.

One festival attendee and DJ, Eden Resende from Brazil who is now living in Berlin said, “Cobblestone Jazz was the highlight of the festival for me,” which did not surprise us.

Cobblestone Jazz has been a techno festival highlight previously as well at DEMF in Detroit.

Other stand-out acts who played really quality sets on the Big Wheel Stage were Efdemin and Steve Bug.

Although it was noted that during Steve Bug’s set there were a few problems with final scratch, when it was crashing.

When I spoke with Eden about the vinyl purist versus mp3 debate, Eden elaborated further about this phenomenon in Berlin.

He said, “People in Berlin support traditional record shops a lot.

“Here it’s something that happens because we have so many great stores that we want to keep going.

“I do however support mp3s in places like Brazil where people cannot afford to ship records from other places.

“In that case, mp3s are much cheaper and more easily shared.”

Regarding the scope of international talent, Melt Festival featured a fair share of bands from places like the US, UK, Norway, Iceland, and Brazil.

Festival attendees also came from a host of countries. Beatporal met a few Brazilians, Americans, Canadians, and Brits in attendance.

Another new development this year was Red Bull’s sponsorship.

The Red Bull stage on Saturday night featured a whole line-up of mostly Brazilian Baille Funk artists such as MC Gringo, Edu K, Bonde Do Role, and live act Deize Tigrona.

Eden, who speaks Portuguese, explained that Deize’s lyrics are obscene and pornographic.

She had the audience with hands in the air, likely not knowing what she was singing about – mostly sadomasochistic sex and prostitution, with plenty of slang from the Favelas in Brazil.

Another festival attendee, Daniel, also from Brazil praised the sets of Franz Ferdinand, Booka Shade, and Boys Noize.

Eden piped in and said, “You like Boys Noize? It sounds like telephone advertisement music to me.”

“It’s too polished and not authentic enough. I prefer the techno sounds of Len Faki, and Ellen Allien”.

It appeared that at the Melt Festival, surrounded by fellow music fans there to have a good time, there was something for everyone. 
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Main Photo of M.A.N.D.Y. and photo of Ellen Allien taken by Maurice Baker, provided by Melt Festival.

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