Our top 10 most ‘turnt’ moments from the 2016 summer festival season!

Insert the sad-faced emoji, because the summer festival season has just come to an end! Forget waking up on a Saturday and getting ready to dance underneath the sparkling sunshine, your days will soon be spent cuddling up in front of the heater and longing for the beloved summer to return once again. However, with all this sorrow and nostalgia comes a bundle of cherished memories you can look back on and here at Alive At Night we had an incredible summer making memories to last a lifetime.

Over the past couple of months, we’ve been lucky enough to attend several mind-blowing events and every time we enter the dance-floor crazy shit happens, which is why we’re going to get personal and share some of our most turnt, hilarious and cherished highlights from the 2016 summer!

10. What we did instead of Decibel Outdoor… 

This year, Sara and I decided that our liver was in dire need of a break, so we decided to take the Decibel weekend off and spend our Saturday vintage shopping in Utrecht. Little did we know that the party cravings were about to hit and by the time 5PM crept around we were hesitantly making rough plans to go out that night…

Fast forward to 7AM on Sunday and two dishevelled lasses are returning home from the Strafwerk afterparty, which was held in De Marktkantine in Amsterdam. We took a step outside of our usual Hard Dance bubble and got wild to filthy Techno and guess what? We had an awesome f*cking time!

9. Closing down the season at Q-BASE

As September crept around, the mood shifted from pure euphoria to slight nostalgia as we prepared for our final festival of the season, Q-BASE. Whilst on our way to Weeze, we made a pact that we were going to throw down like there was no tomorrow, and guess what? Between filming ‘Into The Wild,’ drinking wine and putting sticky notes on people I think it’s safe to say that we had a satisfying ending to one hell of a summer.

Oh, and just some words about the festival itself; the mainstage this year was spectacular, the vibe was unparalleled and in the three years I’ve attended Q-BASE I can safely admit that the 2016 edition was my favourite!

8. Fatality Outdoor’s first edition

Watching new event concepts flourish is one of the most exciting things to happen within the scene and at the end of July a brand-new raw Hardstyle festival was born. If I may quote myself, the only way I could describe Fatality Outdoor was ‘gezellig AF.’ The organisation ticked all the boxes, the mainstage was ambitious, the line-up was diverse and the vibe was on point! I’ll be pleased if this concept makes a triumphant return in 2017!

7. Losing my ‘Dominator-virginity’

I’ve always been a lover of Hardcore, but never had I ever attended a fully-fledged Hardcore event before and on Saturday the 16th of July that changed. Walking into Dominator was like walking into a completely different world and I wasn’t ready for the greatness that was about to continuously hit me in the face. From the stage designs to the overall vibe and kick-ass production, this festival quickly marked it’s spot as one of my all-time favourites.

Oh, and let’s not forget that a world record for drunkenness was achieved at Dominator and I am not sure if I’m proud or appalled.

6. Sara’s Wednesday-Sunday Electric Love Festival bender

Our Austrian gal Sara returned back to home soil during July and during her time there she attended the colossal Electric Love Festival. For those who have us on Snapchat (AANmedia) and saw the regular updates from the weekend, you probably gathered that this festival is one of our biggest highlights at AAN HQ.

Sara conquered the weekend like a true warrior as she drank wine for breakfast, beer for lunch and spirits for dinner, followed by a delightful side of Hardstyle! This festival was one for the books and a road-trip to Austria for Electric Love should be on everybody’s bucket list.

5. Interviewing some of the biggest names

As well as the usual party highlights, this summer brought forth some major professional highlights for the Alive At Night team. From reading our content, you’d know that I (Cassi) had the honour to speak to some of the biggest names in the scene this summer, so I’m going to take a moment to cherish a couple of memorable interviews.

First up were the Defqon.1 Legends, consisting of The Prophet, Headhunterz and Technoboy – I’d actually never met Headhunterz before, so I was slightly nervous, but it turned out great! Another big interview was with Sander van Doorn, which I conducted at WiSH Outdoor – this was a huge honour to have him on the site. Oh, and let’s not forget about doing two interviews with my Frenchcore bro Dr. Peacock – it’s been such a pleasure to learn about the genre from him! A huge thanks to all of the artists and their management.

4. Partying with our bro$$if Chris One at WiSH Outdoor

In the Hardstyle scene there’s a select few artists that we enjoy partying with and our Swedish bro Chris One is an example of a dude who knows how to get down. We caught up with Chris One after his set and after a couple of cheeky wines and Bacardi Razz’s from the backstage fridge (thanks The Magic Show) we were more than ready to party. The partying continued until the early hours of the morning when we found ourselves in his hotel room. Things got very wild, but I’ll leave the rest of it to your own imagination. 😉

3. Getting ‘skitz’ at Mysteryland

After attending Mysteryland (aka, Skitzyland) for the very first time in 2015, I was adamant on attending again in 2016. And alongside Sara and our film guy Dennis (DEM Media) we did exactly that as we captured the finest moments of the festival on film for our second ‘Into The Wild’ episode. We somehow managed to attract the craziest people to our camera and our signature question “Nice drugs m8?” has now become a catchphrase.

After filming throughout the entire day on Saturday, our Sunday at Mysteryland was spent partying, drinking vodka from the artist lounge and enjoying all of the superb stages! This was definitely one of the most unforgettable weekends to date.

2. Filming our first episode of ‘Into The Wild’ at Dance Valley

After planning a new way to deliver content and collaborating with DEM Media, we came up with the ‘Into The Wild’ concept, which aims to shed light on the good, bad and ugly side of festivals. Bringing an uncensored view of Hard Dance music and its culture, we decided to humorously fuck with partygoers by walking around the crowd and handing out hand soap and toothpaste.

To be honest, I didn’t think that people would accept them, especially the toothpaste, but judging by all of the people who rubbed the toothpaste into their gums we can safely say that partygoers agree that “oral hygiene is pretty fucking important.” Also, another huge highlight of this day was finding a Spanish guy who was severely ‘cooked’ and asking our signature question “Nice drugs M8?” to our absolute surprise he proudly replied “I’m a vegetarian.” This guy is our hero. Check out the episode below, you won’t regret it!

1. Filming the Defqon.1 Day Reports (and the afterparty in Fuarkistan)

Coming in at #1 and serving as my biggest highlight of the summer was working for Q-dance at Defqon.1 and filming the Day Reports. Oh my gosh, how can I even explain how incredible this was?! I was offered the true Defqon.1 experience and was honoured to do the following: Dancing on stage with Dr. Peacock, interviewing the lively partygoers, filming out the campsite, going on a helicopter ride and experiencing the stunning terrain from a bird’s eye view, interviewing the Defqon.1 Legends, taking selfies with all of the artists in the artist lounge, doing shots with Niels from Frequencerz and of course, after-partying like a boss!

During the weekend we were also staying in a bungalow and I’m pretty sure that ‘Fuarkistan’ (yes, we named our bungalow Fuarkistan) was the party republic for ‘professionals!’ What an incredible and unforgettable weekend. Thanks again to Q-dance for having me!

A huge thanks to all the friends, colleagues, artists and organisations who made this summer so unforgettable, we’re already counting down the days until next years’ festival season. For our readers, we want to hear your greatest personal memories from the festival season, so feel free to drop your most ‘turnt’ stories into the comment box below!