‘Intense’ is an understatement – This Was Intents Festival 2016!

**Disclaimer – All photographs used retain credit to Intents Festival, Rossumedia & EDMKevin.com**

Awwww shieet. Intents. A colossal, unforgettable gathering that I’m honoured to be a part of once again. Last year, I took my wonderful non-Hardstyle brother with me on the Sunday and aside from him turning out to be a potential Minus Militia fan and getting completely wasted, his first Hard Dance experience turned out to be a huge success! As this years’ edition dawned upon me, my excitement grew exponentially as I was keen to see what this wild, wild weekend had in store for both of us. This year, I decided that it was time to level it the fuck up and take my bro to the notorious ‘Intents City’ camping ground. And guess what? They don’t call this shit “Intents” for no reason, the entire weekend was an experience and a half! So gather ’round, children and lemme clue you in on the insanity we lived.

Day 1 – Friday

Together with a good friend of mine, Lukas from Hardtours, and my brother arrived at my place at around 2:00PM and let me tell you, the excitement on his face spoke more than a thousand words. After jetting out of the house at lightning speed, we arrived at the A2 at around 16:26, the place where I made my first voice voice recording. We were already looking forward to sitting in our camping chairs and enjoying the first hours of Intents at the pre-party and after tredging through the mud and rewarding ourselves with a refreshing Ice Tea, we arrived at the camping line just before 5:00PM. 

The VIP entrance wasn’t really a VIP entrance as pretty much anyone and everyone was piling into the queue – not cool! It took us a good hour to finally get into the camping grounds and by then I was tired and wanted to drink my body weight in beer. All I wanted to do was kick back and sit down, but no – we had to line up in front of a rope for putting our tents up. Whilst the security actually did a solid job of keeping shit in order, our ‘lovely’ neighbours ruined it by putting up three additional tents, barely leaving any room for us (thanks for that… NOT). Despite my vexed state, I demanded my three pillars of festival camping happiness: beer, music and my fucking camping chair! Mind you, by the time we had our tent set up it was 6:15PM.

We missed NSCLT, but were happy to finally get to Da Tweekaz. While for me the highlight of the Tweeka set was the general atmosphere itself, my brother just completely lost his shit, saying “I 10/10 can’t fucking deal” when he heard the ‘Frozen’ and ‘Game Of Thrones’ bootlegs. To make things better, I finally had the chance to catch up with fellow AAN’er and my best friend Marlene!

Next up was Coone, who of course was the first one to play the anthem at the festival, as far as I could recall. He played a pretty mixed set, not much of my style, but I still enjoyed it. Things were in full Belgian swing as the first Heeeey-Hooo’s were blaring through the air. By this time I noticed that I was surprisingly sober, resulting in me getting myself some well-needed tokens! Token prices were rather kind to my bank account, with about 7.5 tokens for 20€; a beer/token was therefore around 2.70€. As soon as I turned around my brother kind of had vanished (man, he would have loved ‘Swoosh Fever’) so I took it amongst myself to find some friends and colleagues to hang out with.

It was now time for DBSTF to perform – well, just S-Te-Fan. Unfortunately D-Block was injured the week before the event and had to remain in hospital, however his partner-in-crime still provided the full DBSTF experience!

After rocking out at the mainstage for a while longer, I moved on to the Hardcore stage to witness boss bitches Korsakoff and Day-Mar. For a while it did look like a back-to-back set, but apparently the girls just had a very elegant way of letting each other have the honor to spin the wheels of steel. I am not really that much of a Hardcore fan, but I was surprised by how enjoyable the music was to me.

Do I really like Hardcore better than Rawstyle? Hmm… That was a question for my sober self… During Destructive Tendencies mind-blowing set, Lukas and I started to feel the chill, so we moved towards the tent which was being absolutely annihilated by Warface and MC Da Syndrome. If Raw-fans know something, it’s how to tear a fucking tent down! Fueled by beer and the good vibes around me I just hakk’ed along, adrenaline pumping from the sheer aggression of the music.

Long story short, what a glorious way to kick off this weekend of madness! I can safely say that the pre-party was a huge success and as I brushed my teeth and rolled up in my sleeping bag, excitement filled my soul for the next day’s adventures!

Day 2 – Saturday

I awoke from a combination of bright light and a slight hangover-influenced headache that pounded enough to make me question my adulthood. Since both Lukas and my brother were still asleep in their tents, I had breakfast on my own and took some time out to relax before taking a shower.

When we arrived, we barely had any time to check out what Intents City had to offer, so after looking around I was MORE than impressed – the infrastructure definitely made up for our troublesome arrival! I passed by the friendship camping district which was a wonderful array of camps with their own crazy names (“FC Rustaaaaaagh,” anyone?) on lanes like Reverse Bass Road or Insanity Street, before crossing over the domain of small bungalows before arriving at the Main Square. I took a look around; there was a tiny supermarket, a camping supplies store, food, drinks (even cold smoothies), benches with USB plugs to charge your phone and of course, the showers and toilets. Before checking off on this positive feedback, I consulted my brother and despite the communal displease with our twat-neighbours, my brother gave Intents City a huge thumbs up!

Everything was conveniently located, which was especially good for hungover people refusing to walk long distances. I took a well deserved, warm(!!!) 1-token shower and had never felt so alive. After doing my hair and makeup (which designed itself a bit difficult, since not all power outlets were working) I headed back to our tent. After checking my email I found out I actually also had backstage access, which I wouldn’t even get the chance to use, since my dance floor experiences were just about to get even better.

We bought some more tokens and headed for the colossal mainstage, which in my opinion was one of the most beautiful stages I’ve ever seen! Arriving fashionably late, we checked out Cyber, who played a set filled with bouncy Reverse Bass, techy sound design and beloved Cyber tracks, including his holy gem “I Am God.” What a perfect way to start the day!

At the VIP deck we received free drinks (yay for vouchers!) and discovered all kinds of lovely details such as a photo booth where you could print out pictures (my brother and me took a picture for our mum), a girl handing candy to everyone, fat boys in a chill area and (the best) the VIP toilets. I ran into Austrian friends of mine and we decided to have our first alcoholic beverages of the day. My brother was enjoying the situation, taking pictures of almost anything he found remotely interesting. Mid-photo, I ran into Sub Zero Project and Seth Hills, who funnily enough also brought his brother! After a quick chat, I hid in the shade; my skin was not ready for sunshine, seeing as I’d prepared for rain!

I was surprised by how great the weather was, so we decided to stay on the VIP deck until the conclusion of Josh & Wesz’ live-set and man, that live-act was one worth experiencing! Treating the lively crowd to 30 minutes of non-stop nostalgia and energy, for those who missed out, I feel incredibly sorry for you because it was a big stand-out of the weekend!

I’m calling it – no sunny festival should lack a Bass Modulators set. With tracks like “Oxygen” and “Solar” the festival vibe reached a high point, however my personal highlight of the set was when the boys unexpectedly dropped “Blame It On The Music” resulting in a massive uproar from the crowd! Once again my #turnt brother had vanished and I had no idea where he disappeared to. Do all brothers do that? Just vanish and not reply to text messages? Jeez…

After watching DBSTF solo again, I headed for the Boombox to catch one of the most promising new talents – Jay Revee. I enjoyed the sick vibe in the Boombox (sit-down included!) for a bit and then decided to get my brother, as at the end of Coone‘s set the Anthem Show would be held. My brother eventually stumbled towards me and I hurried him along to catch the anthem show. “It’s All In The Game,” what a brilliant anthem and what a great anthem show! I pulled out my camera and filmed the spectacle for our fans on Snapchat (follow us at ‘AANmedia’!) and we decided to stay at the VIP deck to recover from the insanity of it all.

Following up, Hard Driver’s set was fantastic, but when Ran-D opened his set with his “Voodoo People” bootleg, I was straight-up sold! The evening was approaching, meaning that the intensity exponentially grew to a climax. Lukas and I decided it was time for some “Flügel” and we shared a 10-pack (well that escalated quickly) before I received a message from the ‘Unleashed House Party’ winners, who invited me to come and party with their squad. An invitation I could not refuse! We sang along to “FCK EDM,” “For The Streets,” danced until our feet forgot how to move and drank our body weight in alcohol!

I went back to the VIP to meet up with my crew and witness the spectacle of Brennan Heart, who’s set was the epitome of modern euphoric. Filling his performance with bootlegs, mashups and some new tracks from his new album, the crowd was evidently experiencing beautiful moments during “Imaginary” and “Lose My Mind.”

After losing my shit to a rather medium-rare set by Frequencerz, the day’s climax had dawned. And then, there they were… Gunz For Hire live – the set that made me question my existence. As far as my hazy memory serves, I couldn’t remember exactly what went down, but I did remember that it tore me (and thousands of others) a new one. Who cares that the power went out twice – that shit had me fucking deceased. Shit, son, I was done. I had not seen anything comparable since my first “real” festival moment on a hill next to the Main Stage at Q-BASE 2009 during Noisecontrollers, so you can imagine how excited I was.

Everything from the production to the vibe and G4H’s performance came together to form a multi-climactic spectacle and this says a lot, coming from a person who’s not even a huge G4H fan. It was absolutely brilliant; holy shit kids, go witness these guys live in action because it is damn worth it!

With tired feet and an exhausted soul, I made my way back to the campsite, ready to conquer the forsaken lands for one last hoorah!

Day 3 – Sunday

I woke up somewhere around 7AM and started my day on a high note with a delicious breakfast consisting of a sugar waffle, a croissant and some juice before embarking on my usual grooming rituals (cleaning my face and brushing my teeth). The morning started slow as I saw a lot of hungover people trying to pull it together for one final day, making me feel thankful that I didn’t get too turnt on the Saturday. After waking up my troops, we gathered at the Main Square to get some delicious food into our systems. We indulged in fanta, pizza, fries and sat there for a minute, basking in our glory.

Once again, the weather report had betrayed us and instead of rain, we had sun, which was a pleasant, but burning surprise. After having a shower, we headed back to the camping, where we decided that SRB – “Solid Cervezas” had become our camps official anthem. Then Pherato and the one, the only, the “famouse,” and “ever so amazingly hitted-up” Noiseshock passed by and decided to stay with us until we headed out to watch Devin Wild vs Galactixx. We exchanged experiences (at least those we remembered) from the day before and had a good laugh.

We were just in time (aka 20min too late) to catch the last bits of Devin Wild and Galactixx’s great opening set, which we caught from the chill zone on the VIP deck. At this time it was a little too hot to go all-out, so we just kicked back and enjoyed the gentle breeze. Euphoric boys Code Black and Cyber were up next and whilst the combination appeared a little odd, the vibe of their set was pretty solid! Both guys relentlessly kicked out their best tracks, resulting in an amazing, energetic set that every Euphoric fan would have frothed over.

The next combination was equally as interesting, with the organisation teaming up The Madman and the Melody Man, AKA Frontliner vs. Atmozfears. Despite the brilliant effort from both artists, the music itself was a bit of an odd combination and not as harmonious as Cyber and Code Black’s set. The crowd was also visibly feeling the Sunday vibe; a lot of them looked tired and hungover and the insane, sudden heat didn’t make the situation better. Oh gosh, the things I would’ve done for some fresh, cold water!

During the last few minutes of this rather odd set,  my squad decided that it was time for lunch and since we wanted to continue enjoying the music we sat down close to the main stage. At a first glance, I noticed that there wasn’t many vegetarian options, so me and my brother (yes, both of us are vegetarians) decided to go for fries again. Meanwhile, Lukas was complaining that his “hot sauce wasn’t fucking hot enough.” As I ate, I soaked up the sights around me and noticed the the lovely waste bins with basket ball baskets, the motivational signs plastered across the festival grounds and the general feeling of sportsmanship and unity. Intents tremendously stepped up their game this year – the design, production and atmosphere intertwined to create a parallel world for visitors to immerse themselves in.

After our lunch Lukas and me went to see A-Lusion in an area that was filled with people my own age! I decided to get another Smirnoff Ice, as beer was just not an option in this heat and once again my brother had vanished… AGAIN! A-Lusion treated us to a solid set, packed with hits like “Live For The Moment,” and “Music In You.”

Since my brother actually wanted to see Angerfist and Miss K8, I decided to go and look for him, only to find my brother half asleep with a shirt on his head, in our weird neighbours tent that they put up and never used. He looked pretty dead and I considered poking him with a stick; it was actually a miracle that I managed to wake him up without stomping on his head. What the fuck, dude…

On our way to Radical Redemption live (because hey, why the fuck not) we discovered the rest of the food district. It was glorious! One food booth after another, there was so much variety available such as fruit, Vietnamese food, pizza and even protein shakes, because you gotta see Warface, Delete and Regain at 9PM, but gotta meet up with the boys afterwards for an impromptu gym sesh! And guess what?! There were even nachos! Bitch, not even the ‘Radical’ can stop me from having my Nachos. They cost two tokens, but oh, oh, oh, those were the best spent tokens of the weekend. Speaking of Radical, he put on quite an amazing and surprisingly enjoyable experience, even for a euphoric cunt like myself.

Then it was time to go see Paul Elstak. My brother just loves Paul Elstak and New Kids, so I guess you can see the connection… We were so incredibly lucky to even catch the last minutes of Buzz Fuzz, an experience that I definitely want to live again! Paul Elstak, with his golden chain around his neck, played what my dear brother described as “THE FULL FUCKING FISSA SHIT, BRO” which directly translates to “A nicely balanced set of new tracks and well known classics, which surely kept your feet dancing” Was there a limit? No, no. No, no, no, no – there’s no limit.

After watching Paul Elstak, stumbled back to the mainstage to witness not only the illustrious end-show, but one of the greatest tag-teams ever – Charly Lownoise and Mental Theo. I just love those guys; from cheesy over-the-top sing-a-long songs, to classics, bootlegs, Hardcore, Hardstyle, they pulled off a killer set! The vibe reached an all-time high, the crowd was giving no fucks and when you combine that with an a-class production, magic was at our realm! To top it all off, the overwhelming end-show wrapped up this adventurous non-stop weekend of insanity! After witnessing the gorgeous spectacle on the mainstage, we scurried back to our tents to get some well-needed zzz’s.

Was Intents all it was cracked up to be…?

Intents Festival is booming in growth, year by year. But instead of just increasing the quantitative qualities of the festival, the entire production received a massive boost as well as Intents City. Seriously that was one of the best camping grounds I’ve seen in my entire raving career; everything from the layout, to the general atmosphere and facilities made it a comfortable, carefree experience for all.

The surprisingly amazing weather in addition with the small details within the festival made it a unique and unforgettable experience that I;d recommend for any party-goer. To wrap it up, Intents Festival 2016 was definitely one of the best festivals I’d witnessed over the past few years and if the camping is able to consistently retain that same quality, then I’m officially awarding it the crown for “best hardstyle festival camping!”

A huge thanks for Intents Festival for having me – you guys nailed it!

Check out Intents online:
https://www.intentsfestival.nl/
https://www.facebook.com/intentsfestival
https://twitter.com/intentsfestival