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[Report] Dominator Festival 2011 (NL)

After a few years of roaming the country (and even a year without an edition at all), Dominator seems to have found its home in the south of the Netherlands at the E3 beach. For the first time, the event sold out a few days in advance, probably due to the fact that it didn’t take place in the same weekend as Tomorrowland (which also sold out in record time, even with the addition of a third day). Both organizations must realize that this is the way to go for the following years.

We left in the afternoon and planned to arrive at the party just in time to see Ophidian and D-Passion perform their battle on the mainstage. Unfortunately, the traffic already slowed down at 5 km from the exit on the highway so it took quite some time to get to the parking lot. Luckily, the walk to the entrance wasn’t as long as at, for example, Ground Zero festival. All in all, we arrived at the mainstage about 15 minutes before the set would finish. It turned out we hadn’t missed all that much, as Ophidian and D-Passion were playing a mainstream set with “So Many Sacrifices”.

Therefore, we decided to go check out the rest of the area’s. The first area we encountered, was the Hardstyle area, located on the beach. A bit further down the road was our first stop, the terror area. DJ Beatkiller, of whom we heard for the first time, played some great early “terror” records like “Neophyte – Mikey”, “Drokz – Bust That Ass” and “Alles Naar De Klote”, but his mixing skills weren’t all that. It was hard not to notice the decorative flags throughout the area, with inscriptions like “Xtreme Terror Zombies”.

The early hardcore area was a bit more basic, but had a nice stage in the length of the tent. After Dune’s set with the legendary “Are You Ready To Fly” and “Million Miles Away From Home”, Mental Theo continued the happy hardcore portion of the day with “Have You Ever Been Mellow”, “Stars”, “Aquarius”, “Bioweapon – Don’t Hold Ya Breath” (based on “Derb – Derb”) and “Fantasy World”. Downside were the mainstream kicks implemented in several of these tracks or mixes. Anyway, the crowd loved it but when Critical Mass took their time to start up their live-act, the crowd left in even greater numbers.

The much lower volume didn’t help either and it wasn’t until old Thunderdome tracks were announced, that the crowd picked up the pace a bit. Nevertheless a nice way of connecting to the past again, with “Lift Me Up”, “Happy Generation” and such. Turns out even a few gabbers who had visited Mysteryland ’96 were present (when asked by Danny, the MC, to make themselves known). The tent was open on both sides and led to the beach, were lots of picknick tables were placed. Also, a few special tents caught our eye. On one side, you could get a nice massage and on the other, you could chill out with a water pipe.

But there was important work to be done, as Bryan Fury and I:Gor were next on our list of “must-sees”. After only five minutes in the industrial tent, enjoying the breakbeat madness of the Polish artist, we saw someone being dragged out of the tent, shaking like a madman. Obviously a bad trip or something, but it took quite some time before he was taken care of, as people kept gathering around him outside the tent. After walking around a bit, it became clear how international this party was. Even a bunch of people from Sweden had made the trip to The Netherlands!

After a while, we suddenly realized that DJ Promo had already been playing for over 15 minutes and rushed towards the early hardcore area again. Not a moment too soon, as this turned out to be another magnificent set by Sebastian Hoff. After all, who can resist stomping tracks like “Midnight Impact”, “Pressure On The Fakes”, “Dancefloor Hardcore”, “Brother Of Conflict” or “Runnin’ Against The Rules”. The sound system was great and the best was yet to come, as the last few records were in his oldest and fastest style. Tracks that are hardly played anymore such as “Brian Acardy – Let Da Bass Boom”, “Speakermurder (DJ Promo Remix)”, “Wayz Of Da Undaground”, “Cold As Stone” and “Beat Ya Brain Again”. Beyond genius!

Of course, we needed to strengthen up again, so we got a snack to eat. A “frikandel sandwich” or French fries were about the only thing you could use half a token for. The sandwiches cost 1,5 token and contained quite a big sausage, so it was worth its money in our opinion. The parking lot probably wasn’t, as it had the same problem as any other festival taking us more than an hour and a half to leave. The fact that people walking towards the parking lot used the same escape route, was not the best way to get things moving. Maybe this could be dealt with in another way next year, like having multiple exits towards the parking lots? Anyway, after visiting the 2007 edition in Groningen, we got home a lot earlier this time.