I spent the weekend in Oudenaarde, at the Donkvijvers, where me and my lovely girlfriend attended the “Feest in het Park” music festival! Here’s what we saw and what I thought of it!
Friday
After pitching our tent, we headed for the festival grounds to watch Mintzkov, a Belgian softrock band (Mimosa, Push the faders high) who’ve just released their new album. This was a rather doll concert, quite less than I’ve expected of them actually. The female singer obviously didn’t feel like singing that much… After that we checked out Cosy Mosy who was playing a DJ set. Nice beats and a nice location! After Cosy Mosy we went to see Chicks on Speed (Wordy rappinghood, Fashion rules, …). I have to say those gals are about the craziest I’ve ever seen. Weird dancing and ever weirder songs like “My space”, “Art Rules” and much much more. Loads of fun and catchy tunes. Respect for the ladies!
On friday night we watched as Coldcut took over the Grand Mix room with it’s “Journey through sound” mix. This was a really stunning blend of both crowdpleasers (Sweet dreams) and some more underground tracks (Assasin de la police!). Also the DJ had this nifty turntable which allowed him to scratch both sound and video, really nice!
Saturday
After a nice breakfast with some bacon & eggs and a nice barbeque lunch (which isn’t a sure thing at a festival), we headed out to the festival grounds to see Soapstarter. I hadn’t heard of the band before but they were really, really good. Easy listening funky rock. Absolutely one of the revelations of Fihp! After Soapstarter we checked out Buscemi. When you go and see Buscemi, you kinda know what to expect: funky exotic (Balkan) sounds. If you hear one song by Buscemi, you’ve kinda heard them all and I SWEAR I can hear that woman say “Henin” (as in Justine Henin) in the song “Sahib Balkan”.
After Buscemi I wanted to see Admiral Freebie, not because I’m a fan of his music but just because I wanted to see him live. I have to say I enjoyed his concert, great music and a great guy 
!
Sunday
Off to the festival grounds for the last day with some known and unknown names to see! First thing we saw was Jerboa. I already saw him perform a set last year at the Pukkelpop festival where it was just him, his turntables and an EFX box or two -) . For a while now he’s taken his music to the next level. Percussion, guitars and synths included, his (or their, now) beats were smoother than honey, another really great concert!
After Jerboa we saw the Puppetmastaz, which was a superfun concert! As the name suggest, they perform a kind of puppetry act in which the puppets rap some delicious lines and drop some bomb beats, really fun to watch and a nice sound. Calvin Harris (”acceptable in the eighties…”) was next on the list, fun rock with an electronic touch. Quite good, altough not really my thing…
After Harris Ladytron perfomed their usual sterile set which lacked the fun and enthousiasm we received from other bands, a bit dissapointing… Since we had more than an hour before Chromeo kicked in, we went to see Flip Kowlier (who’s going solo nowadays). If he’d worn a cowboy hat, I would have sworn he was a country singer (Jihaaaa!). I like their sound but I really HATE it that he only sings in that Western Flemish accent, only one tenth of Belgium understand, that’s just a pitty…
Down to the last one, Chromeo, which to my surprise is just a two member band, blew the roof of with an amazing, funky set! Really nice! Sexy time!
While I feel I’m getting old for these kind of festivals, I had a great time with my girlfriend. Saw some great bands and spoiled ourselves gastronomically (do you know anyone else that brings passion fruit to a festival? ), maybe hopefully till next year Donkvijvers!
