THE FLYING DUTCH EINDHOVEN 2015
On the 30th of May it was finally time for The Flying Dutch! The concept organized by John Ewbank & ALDA Events as ‘House of Orange’ that unites 10 of the greatest Dutch DJ’s at one festival on 3 locations is very unique. It managed to sell out within only 2 weeks which was not suprising considering the line-up (in alphabetical order): Afrojack, Armin van Buuren, Fedde Le Grand Hardwell, Nicky Romero, Oliver Heldens, Showtek, Sunnery James & Ryan Marciano, W&W, Yellow Claw. Those world class DJ’s performed in Amsterdam, Rotterdam & Eindhoven using helicopters as their mean of transportation, therefore ‘The Flying Dutch’. It not just about those world class DJ’s though, The Flying Dutch is also about local talent, art and design.
We have visited The Flying Dutch Eindhoven so we had to take the train to station Eindhoven Beukenlaan. The Flying Dutch was sold out & had predicted 30.000 visitors for this location so we knew we had to get there on time. There were huge signs telling visitors where to go but you could hardly miss the festival location.
Line-up
Loudgarden
We had never heard of Loudgarden before but it turned out that they are a female DJ duo from Eindhoven. John Ewbank had already said at RTL Late Night that all the openers were local talents so we were curious what they had to offer. Unfortunately for the girls it was pouring down from the sky when they started playing but they did a nice job. Starting a bit deeper in the House genre they showcased their DJ skills and it managed to impress us. Funny enough when they played Martin Garrix & DVBBS’s ‘Gold skies’ the sky became clear & finally we could admire some sun. The girls played a satisfying warm up set with some groovy house vibes & even some Daft Punk.
Sunnery James & Ryan Marciano
Sunnery James & Ryan Marciano were the first of the 10 Dutch superstars to perform & as always they started off strong. The intro which featured the song put in the The Flying Dutch trailer in cooperation with ING was pretty cool. The Dutch DJ duo famous for their House music and currently doing their Sexy By Nature tour played their banger ‘Sound Of the Underground’, John Newman’s ‘Love me again’ in a House remix & Sander Van Doorn’s hit ‘Ori Tali Ma’. Suprising was the house remix they played of Dotan – Home, awesome vibes!
W&W
Willem & Ward aka W&W had were up next & instantly made the atmosphere good by opening with ‘Bigfoot’. ‘Lean on’ by DJ Snake & Major Lazer was received really well by the crowd. It was a classic W&W sets with melodic piano buildups & hard hitting bigrooms drops like in ‘Lift Off’ which was cool to hear for us. We had the feeling that at some points the guys went back to their trancy roots which the audience clearly appreciated.
Armin van Buuren
If there’s someone who doesn’t need an introduction it’s the king of Trance Armin van Buuren. We’ve seen him play a couple of times this year & always he manages to get everybody in A State Of Trance. His set at The Flying Dutch was no exception. Opening with the ASOT 650 anthem the anticipation of the crowd for his set became very clear. As we expected he played his massive hit with Mr. Probz ‘Another you’, a remix of ‘ping pong’ and Armin closed off a bit harder with the all-time classic ‘Exploration of space’.
Yellow Claw
The presence of Yellow Claw at The Flying Dutch did not go un-noticed. They keep growing bigger and bigger in popularity and recently are able to represent ‘trap’ as a genre all over the world. It must be mentioned though that no Yellow Claw set only consists of ‘trap music’, no they mix up genres & even raise it up to 150 bpm to create a maximum hype. The MC is clearly an important player in this because his voice is very convincing. Their set at The Flying Dutch with ‘Shotgun’, some collabs with LNY TNZ, a sitdown, ‘Last night ever’, obviously ‘Till it hurts’ & Headhunterz’s ‘Colours’ in a trap remix satisfied all trap lovers in the audience. Special was that Yellow Claw also played a bit of Deep House, we assume to make the transition to the next Flying Dutch superstar DJ: Oliver Heldens.
Oliver Heldens
Oliver Heldens is already a Deep House star but he manages to keep everybody surprised with his skills. We think his set was one of the best at The Flying Dutch because with his smooth house vibes you basically can imagine yourself on Ibiza if you would close your eyes. He put in quite some known tracks in his set like Dr. Kucho’s ‘Can’t stop’ & a cool mashup of his banger ‘Koala’ vs ‘Overdrive’. A very enjoyable set according to us.
During his set we decided to get something to eat and relax a little. The amount of food-stands was good but it was rush hour so it took some time to get our food. The kebab was nice though so it was worth the wait. It struck us at this point how massive the lines for the bathroom were, it was made clear where to enter & where to leave the toilet-area but it looked like there weren’t enough toilets, a point for improvement for next year.
Nicky Romero
Time was definitely going fast, basically during the entire day so when Oliver Heldens finished the cool intro started again & it was time for Nicky Romero to represent his Protocol Recordings label at The Flying Dutch. Nicky showcased some of the latest releases of his label like ‘Heartbeat’ but also played tracks that are definitely gonna be heard everywhere this season: ‘Secrets’ by Tiesto, KHSMR & Vassy, ‘Lean on’ by Major Lazer & DJ Snake, Galantis’s ‘You & I’ and more. Cool was that Nicky played ‘Toulouse’ which is not very recent but still does really well with the clip on the LED screen.
Afrojack
Mister Wall Recordings aka Afrojack was up next and that was something we really had looked forward to as he is usually on tour with his Afrojet and not playing in the Netherlands. Playing ‘Ten feet tall’ & ‘Sparks’ Afrojack very quickly set the mood for a really massive set. Especially when he played Tujamo’s ‘Make it bounce’ which you heard everywhere last festival season the crowd started going crazy. Well we thought that was the maximum of crazy we were going to see but no, just when we said this to eachother Afrojack took the mic & announced to play his new collab with Hardwell.. It went off! We’re definitely looking forward to the release of this track! Nick didn’t stop there and kept the atmosphere great by playing ‘Summer’, ‘Blame’ & some blasterjaxx tracks. During his set it finally became clear how epic the end-show was going to be because there was fire coming out of the stage. It should be mentioned that there was a technical issue with a CDJ during his set but that didn’t hurt a slight bit of the vibe & was fixed rather quickly.
Fedde Le Grand
Fedde who wow’ed the country with his ‘Grand’ concept in March took over the decks. For Fedde applies the same as for Afrojack, it’s very special to see him performing in the Netherlands. With one of his latest tracks ‘This’ & the very catchy ‘Cinematic’ as the last tune he played a fun set which consisted of some progressive house & bigroom drops. It was amazing that his set finished with some fireworks which seemed like another tease to get people excited for the endshow.
Showtek
Those guys never disappoint as they have so many popular tracks that work well on every audience. With ‘Get loose’, ‘Cannonball’ & their forthcoming release ‘Satisfied’ which was featured in the Dance Valley trailer they created a great atmosphere. Next to their own tracks they played a set with clearly the summer vibe including David Guetta’s ‘Bad’. In addition to that the duo comes from Eindhoven which made it even more special for the crowd. Unfortunately we were unable to see the complete set of the no. 1 DJ of the world, Hardwell, but we’ve seen the livestream & the pictures which showed that it was an amazing closing set!
Conclusion
We’re happy that ALDA Events & John Ewbank decided to come up with this amazing concept & had, despite the rain in the afternoon, an amazing sunny day! The DJ sets have been strong & it was nice to see some art at the terrain as well. We believe talent always needs to be given a chance & recognized. As for the sets the one that stood out the most according to us was Afrojack’s set but the quality was so extremely high overall that it is hard to pick who was the best. There were a couple of points of improvement but that’s normal since this was the first edition of the event. We strongly recommend you to visit The Flying Dutch 2016, we surely will be there!
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Reporter: Alexander Bouten