Mysteryland.. The longest running Dance Festival in the world and a concept of ID&T Netherlands. It is next to Tomorrowland one of the bright pearls in the Festival landscape and for loads of people something to cross off on their bucket list. This also applied to us, especially now for the first time ever Mysteryland became a full weekend we just had to be a part of it and experience the world of mysteries. So we did on Saturday 29th August and we went bananas! Check out our experience in this report!
Before actually seeing the entrance we had loads of expectations and decided to not follow a schedule of seeing artists performing but just take everything in and see what will impress us and if we like it stay there some longer. First of all after entering we were amazed by the size of the festival terrain, of course we knew it was huge because of the amount of areas but still it made us feel a bit small. While walking to the main-stage it struck us how colorful everything was, in the past we’ve seen stages at Festival with an industrial character and how ‘alive’ the colors made Mysteryland was something refreshing to see.
The main-stage looked like 2 ‘fantasy’ horses looking at each other with in between the DJ booth and a big LED screen behind it. At first sight it didn’t look that impressive but it’s usually the case that stages really flourish when the sky has become dark. We decided to go on with a little tour of the terrain by checking out the Q-Dance stage. The stage was completely in the ‘going bananas’ theme and looked like a huge gorilla that you could call ‘Qing Qong’. Some plastic monkeys were thrown into the crowd. When we took a closer look we saw how incredibly detailed the stage actually was, we were impressed. Waverider was blasting his track ‘For the music’ through the speakers which already caused a nice atmosphere at that area. We should mention the location of this stage was brilliant near a big hill so you could have an amazing overview of the whole festival terrain.
Spinnin’ Sessions area
Spinnin’ Sessions had the honor to host an area featuring many of their world famous artists. We expected to see an outdoor stage but it turned out to be a huge tent. Despite that the huge amount of lasers, lights and big led-screen made it worthy. Sam Feldt was giving the crowd there a good time with some relaxing deep-house tracks.
Food/Drinks area
As time went really fast, as always when you’re having fun, we decided to check out the selections of food & drinks at the Festival terrain. As expected really EVERYTHING was either organic or biologically responsible. We love it when organizations think about the environment and promote healthy but tasty food and drinks. We took a Mexican Taco and tried some biological sugar candy which both tasted very nice.
Walking back back towards the Q-Dance stage we heard Psyko Punkz playing ‘Hit the bong’ which made us relax a bit on the hill and enjoy the view. Mike Mago has surprised us recently with some great releases so we checked the atmosphere during his set at the Spinnin’ Sessions area. We don’t regret that decision at all because the vibe was absolutely great, the groovy house he played was appreciated by loads of people and from that moment on the Spinnin’ Sessions tent has been fully packed during the rest of the day.
Rondé (ft. East & Young) => ‘Run’ Live
We had really looked this special act on stage because of the fact we’ve seen nothing but amazing reviews about Rondé. East & Young are also doing really well with a performance at Sensation in the Netherlands this year and a booking a Sensation in Dubai coming up. The track ‘Run’ which is being shown a lot on Dutch television in a beer commercial sounded amazing live. The enthusiasm of both the DJ’s and the band was really nice to see.
Max Enforcer x Coone => ‘Love x Hate’ Live
As had been announced on social media that weekend Max Enforcer and Coone were going to record the video clip of their collab ‘Love x Hate’. Supported by MC Villain and fans with ‘Love x Hate’ signs the atmosphere when they played this collab was great. We saw it coming because we had already spotted DJ Coone checking out the stage on the VIP-deck at the start of the day. We believe their collab is a great track and we look forward to seeing the video. Next to the collab Max Enforcer played ‘Lost in paradise’, his edit of ‘Shreek’ and ‘United As One’ by Audiotricz. To our pleasant surprise he played Cyber’s ‘We are God’ which created a great vibe amongst the crowd.
Oliver Heldens
If there’s one artist out there with a unique house sound it’s Oliver Heldens. He basically needs no introduction as he’s playing on main stages all over the world. Most recent development for him is the creation of his own record label: Heldeep and the alias Hi-Lo which he uses to experiment with new sounds. With tracks like ‘Can’t you see’ and Hi-Lo’s ‘Renegade Mastah’ Oliver played exactly what the crowd loved.
Noisecontrollers
We’ve seen this king of Hardstyle multiple times this outdoor season and he never disappointed. Same thing applies to his set at Mysteryland. A wonderful combination of old-school and more recent tracks with great melodies. Standing still was impossible and we went bananas raving to his tracks like ‘Tonight’, ‘Down Down’, ‘All around the world’, ‘source code of creation’ and many many more! A great moment was when we played ‘Scantraxx roots’ which instantly brought back memories to the good old days of Project 1.
R3hab
It’s not very common to see R3hab performing in the Netherlands as he’s touring a lot so we didn’t want to miss his set at the main stage of Mysteryland. It was very clear that R3hab is still a very popular artist considering the crowd reaction when he started playing. As expected he played ‘Ready for the weekend’ and his track with Nervo called ‘Revolution’ which is already 2 years old now but still is quite popular.
Outbreak
Outbreak aka Mr. Bassface was meanwhile tearing down the Q-Dance stage with as is common great raw kicks and enough breaks for the people to rest a bit. A nice moment was when he played the amazing Gunz4Hire track ‘May God Be With You All’ which has some lyrics from the movie ‘The Purge’. Of course the area was entirely packed and it became even difficult to find a good spot on the hill.
Ummmet Ozcan
Before claiming a spot on the hill to be able to watch the endshow we decided to go back to the Spinnin’ Sessions area one last time to enjoy the sounds of Ummet Ozcan. We were curious how his latest track ‘Stars’ vs Katt Niall would go off live and wow it did go off! The completely packed tent went crazy because of his big room house drops and the extensive amount of lasers shining through the whole tent.
Endshow
Before going to Mysteryland we had seen last years’ endshow loads of times so we expected a lot! B-Front and Mad-Dog did a great job building up to the final sounds & fireworks that were going to close the day. Well what can we say, the endshow was absolutely mind-blowing! We have seen quite a lot of endshows this Festival season so far but this was next-level. The track-selection and the techniques used to synchronize the fireworks actually made people cry of happiness.
Conclusion
We are so happy to have been able to cross Mysteryland off our bucketlist and we want more! We are seriously considering to go a full weekend next year! If you are also willing to go next year we got some advices for you: 1. Make sure you have very comfortable shoes, the terrain is huge 2. Don’t stay too long at one stage but discover every little bit of what Mysteryland has to offer 3. Keep your friends close as there are loads of people walking around. In general we can say we enjoyed the creative stage-designs and loads of the DJ sets we’ve seen. We’re curious what they will do for next year. That, we don’t know, but we do know that: ‘Yesterday is history, Today is a gift and Tomorrow is a Mystery!’.
© Festivalling.com
Reporter: Alexander Bouten