Lowlands 2007

Monday, August 20th, 2007

I’m back from Lowlands 2007, and it was absolutely fantastic; like always. Three days of music, beer, meeting nice people, eating great food and more beer makes you wish you didn’t have to go back to work. Unfortunately, I’ve got to do exactly that tomorrow-morning. It’s gonna be a rough day.

I wasn’t particularly satisfied about the line-up at Lowlands this year. In fact, there where only a handful of bands I wanted to see, and most of those weren’t especially good either. Some I’d already seen before, such as After Forever. I’ve seen After Forever about twenty times so far, now that I think about it. This time though, they where missing one of their guitar/grunters, which was very noticable in their music. Then again, looking at Floor Jansen is always a joy, and more than made up for their sub-par performance.

I did find out about three new good bands I hadn’t heard of before: Saybia, Damien Rice and one who’s name I can’t remember right now. They’re probably pretty popular, and just about everyone knew who they where, except for me. I’m lagging behind a bit when it comes to today’s music. Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised with those artists.

Another highlight was the Games In Concert show, which features a sixty-person philharmonic orchestra playing music from games such as God of War and FIFA soccer. The best part was when they played the Super Mario Brothers game sound and showed the famous Super Mario Bros Speedrun on the big screen. The crowd went wild. I like classical music, especially when it’s something out of the ‘ordinary’ like this. Superb.

The weather was also great. A lot of the forecasts weren’t very promising, so I was a bit afraid we might find ourselves in a big pool of mud and water (not to mention thunderstorms.. brr), but in the end we had absolutely beautiful weather. Thanks to our group’s Weather Oracle, who regularly received messages from The Other Side (the home-front who was F5-ing on the Internet Weather Radar site) that predicted the weather to within two minutes. That saved us from the one and only huge rainfall during the entire weekend. Thanks Roy and Saskia!

When the pictures come in, I’ll post a couple here on the blog. I’m already looking forward to Lowlands 2008.

Update: Pictures!

Update II: Found the band name for the third band I liked: Arcade Fire!