What’s the secret to putting on a great festival?

If your answer is an eclectic line-up, a wealth of great artisan food stalls and a relaxed environment then the Netherlands’ Best Kept Secret festival might just be the one for you.

Sitting on a beautiful lake in the Netherlands’ Brabant region, Best Kept Secret festival flutters into life behind us. The site on which it sits is normally a safari park but for one weekend a year the animals disappear (we never found out where they go) and the people arrive en masse. They are here to see bands like alt-j, The Libertines and Noel Gallagher playing alongside the likes of Eagulls, Blanck Mass and Future Brown.

Aside from the festival’s five carefully curated stages there’s a wealth of food stalls selling everything from pulled pork and cheeseburgers to sushi rolls and yakatori.

Here’s five reasons we think we’d like to keep this secret to ourselves:

The Incredible Setting

The lakeside-beach setting of Best Kept Secret is the first thing that grabbed our attention. It’s just amazing. By day and by night the water is calming and the forest dense and imposing.

Swings hang from most of the trees, coloured lights trickle through their leaves and the cool evening air swirls around the carefully crafted set pieces.

It’s a relaxed environment, playfully engineered to set the mood from the off. A great hook to lead us in to what would turn out to be a highly enjoyable weekend.

A Surprising Punk Contingent

The first night of this year’s Best Kept Secret was struck with a surprising invading force: punk rock. The festival’s fifth stage played host to Metz, Eagulls, OFF! and Pissed Jeans all of whom put on incredible, charged shows.

Eagulls roared through a synapse snapping set of emotionally charged punk before OFF! came and blew everyone away with their signature brand of old school US hardcore.

Despite their relative aggression in comparison to the festival – Pissed Jeans Matt Korvette commented sarcastically “This is my kind of festival! Unseasonably cold!” – the bands drew large crowds and kicked a different kind of energy into the festival.

You just can not deny the power of these bands.

Big Headliners

OK, we’ll be the first to admit that alt-j aren’t really our cup of tea but we can’t deny that we love a big headliner.

Especially when that headliner is a band we’ve loved since we were teenagers. A band who are inextricably inked in our DNA. A band like The Libertines.

Yes, we’re guilty of nostalgic sing-a-longs to Can’t Stand Me Now, roaring applause after Up The Bracket and we could almost have shed a tear at the You’re My Waterloo encore.

Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds played a set that was littered with Oasis songs like Don’t Look Back In Anger and Champagne Supernova. It still sounds great. Almost makes you wonder what that other bloke was even doing in the first place.

Underground Electronica

Slipping off fifteen minutes before the end of Pissed Jeans would normally be inexcusable for us but when Blanck Mass is kicking off over on the other side of the festival it’s pretty much unavoidable.

Benjamin Powers’ looming, bass-heavy live dub-techno sounded even better live than it does on record. While the crowd remained small and fairly static Powers blasted waves of brutal, hypnotic weight of his latest record out and into the beautiful gulleys and clearings.

Saturday night saw Future Brown bring their postmodern take on trap to the proceedings alongside Ruff Sqwad’s Prince Rapid. The foursome grinned through a set of wobbling grime, trap, dancehall and bass music. Their Tink featuring Wanna Party was a highlight that had the crowd mouthing along and throwing gun fingers.

Sunday’s surprise came in the form of Cairo Liberation Front, the dutch pioneers of “Egyptian wedding rave,” brought sonic treats that were new to our ears. A great way to close down the festival and a fond farewell from the country that had hosted our weekend.

Unbelievable Food

Festival food has come a long way in the last few years. There was a time when undercooked sausages and cold chips were the plats-du-jour of most events. Not any more sir.

Serving food al fresco has become something of an art form and Best Kept Secret are pretty much the Van Gogh’s of the field.

Everything from sushi to pulled pork, tagine to hot dogs and jerk chicken to traditional Dutch croquettes were on offer at reasonable prices from imaginatively presented food stalls.

Jamaican broths served from oil drum barbecues, American airstreams dolling out chilli dogs and full scale greenhouses with plenty of fresh, organic fruit and veg.

The effort and creativeness made a huge difference, a warm, delicious snack after a long day of trudging through fields can be the very thing that makes a festival.

Best Kept Secret wasn’t the best festival we’ve ever been to but it was certainly one of the most pleasant.

The idyllic setting and varied line-up made for a stunning cultural excursion and the friendly, courteous crowds left a charming impression.

If your idea of festival fun is less picnic blankets and more boozed up chanting then it might not be for you but then again, as their name suggests, perhaps they’d rather you didn’t know about it anyway.

Photography by: Theo Cottle

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