News / / 06.01.14

Valhalla Festival

RAI, Amsterdam | December 21

The behemoth that is the Amsterdam RAI appears to be a strange place to hold a music festival, let alone a nine-hour event on the shortest day of the year. Then again, there’s very little that’s ‘usual’ about this event, for this is Valhalla, and it is – as it proclaims itself – very much ‘A Bizarre Ride’…

What’s immediately striking on arrival is the attention to detail that has gone into the event. Make no mistake that this is a festival, even if it is a short one. While the bigger nights at, say, Manchester’s Warehouse Project eschews theatrics for the sake of capacity and sound, Valhalla is a far more extravagant affair – and one that only serves to enhance the experience.

Wandering around with burlesque characters, magicians and dwarves in makeup, we enter a cavernous main room named The Orchestra Pitt, where Tensnake warmed the crowd up with a set of disco-tinged anthems that oozed cheery vibes, an antithesis to the apocalyptic winter solstice conditions outside, while over in The Colosseum, Tommy Four Seven was serving up dirty techno of such ferocity that the crowd shook the prop cages in excitement. Tom Trago then took to the main stage for the evening’s highlight with a progressively ascending set of future house which was loaded with crowd-pleasing bangers. A stellar way to prepare everyone for the big names ahead.

Which leads us onto the Stars of the M4 (as they’ve just been named, right now), with Oxford’s Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs and Bristol’s Eats Everything delivering a huge shot of charismatic party music to the endless sea of people. Flitting effortlessly between one another, their euphoric back to back set of modern house, disco and techno was a grin-inducing triumph, cementing Valhalla as a riotous success.

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valhallafestival.nl

Words: Stephen Flynn

Photo: Skoften

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