I think this party was the first hardstyle festival on a beach at daytime. I cannot recall any previous other hardstyle party where it was on daytime anyway. 40,000 squeezed in a beach…
Met some friends from London at Schiphol and travelled together to Almere. Only noticed just when everyone left the train that a temporary train station was built just for the DefQon-1 festival. Yes, a temporary station with two platforms, rail lines, a ramp and fences around it with crowd control security personnel.
We arrived around 3pm, when the party begun on 10am, so we quickly got processed in the gates for screening and off we go. Circling around this massive beach for about an hour to get ourselves being familiar to this bizzare place. Everything felt tinted yellow because of the gentle breeze washing the sand side-by-side and there were jetskis and boats patrolling the coastline for any people drowning while intoxicated.
There were ten venues all scattered on this beach:
Red: Mainstage
Silver: Industrial
Black: Hardcore
Orange: Hard Trance
Purple: Upcoming Hardstyles
Grey: Oldskool/Early Rave
Blue: Hardstyle
Green: Techno
Brown: Belgium Beats/Frenchtek
Most of these venues were held inside circus tents with the roof supported by the steel pillars. Then the speakers piled up on the pillars at the front and middle. I found it so interesting the industrial design and all. Using scrap metals such as disused metal oil barrels, car tyres and other scrap metals, all moulded together into an industrial sculpture ready to be admired by followers who were swashed in drugs.
We then approached the merchandise stand. Damn, these stuff were selling like hot pancakes. Streams of people lining up throughout the day purchasing from hoodies, to flip-flop sandles, caps, DJ deck mats, keyrings, jackets, shirts and so forth. I came back to this stand and people were still queuing up about 10pm purchasing them. It goes to show that Q-Dance made this remarkable brand movement almost to a point of cult-figure.
The main stage was way at the Western edge of the beach. The stage was 20 storeys high piled with massive amounts of oil barrels and alike with speakers on either end. No point of turning the lights on in the middle of daytime…until about 10.20pm when the sun finally descends down.
There is a ferris wheel at the rear making a full rotation in every 4min.
The deck
The tower of mischievous
The sides
Is it just my observation or is Zany getting more chubby on his every appearance in parties? I remember he was lanky a few years back…
Playful lots under the sun…
Let’s not mention about the trash we dump ay? Once i got my jeans soaked by a bloke behind me with beer. In this weather, my jeans got dried up in a few hours. Life goes on…
Smoke, smoke smoke!
The orange stage, aka Hard trance
Met some blokes who were going on a Contiki tour around Europe. Will be back for Sensation Black…
…and here is the Purple venue, aka Upcoming Hardstyle
How dandy
This is the hardcore stage
Making a blockbuster for the upcoming DefQon-1 DVD
Over-exaggerated speakers…
So how do we dance in the beach you say? All tents are sitting above a wooden platform connected with wooden walkways all connected up. Yeah, it’s impossible to dance in sand…and i would not bother trying…
High octane chicks selling bikes
It literally costs a leg to dance endlessly… Just bringing a spare leg for insurance purposes
Wazzup you say?
Almost sunset
Sculpture by the sea
Nice towering arsenals
That’s all folks!
Here are some scanned papers:
Map of the beach with venues, etc
DJ Schedules for each venues
Wow. Sounds like you had a lot of fun. My favorite image is the 2nd to the last one.