emotional satiety

The Romanian festival Electric Castle continues its trail of magic as a classic of summer festivals in Europe. The event that takes place at Banffy Castle, in the town of Bontida, about 30km from Cluj, the capital of Transylvania, has just celebrated its thirteenth edition with massive success, anthology shows and several aspects to highlight.

And it is not a typical mass festival, in Electric Castle Everything seems to fit together: the varied musical proposal offered in each of its ten stages, the attractions and activations that act as complements to a unique experience, added to a spectacular natural and historical environment, continue to make it an event that audiences already come to beyond the music itself. There’s more: the price of their tickets is really competitive.

Thursday, July 16.

After the warm up on Wednesday, July 15, in which the opening celebration was held in the camping area (an entire city with everything needed for 18,000 campers), the first full day of the festival presented a poster that was marked by the badass and combative hip hop of Sleaford Mods and Kneecap who closed the Hangar stage, the second in importance.

A while before the locals Funkorporation They opened perhaps the best stage of the festival, the Backyard Stage, located in the backyard of the Castle, a space where musical openness rules and values ​​of world music from all latitudes of the planet are shown.

To honor the stage proposal, the French closed it that night Ko Shin Moon. unleashing the party with his notions of grassroots electronics, if this existed. Balu Brigade He did his thing: danceable pop, selfies and smiles all over the venue.

To end the day, the luxury entertainers Dub Pistols (a classic of the festival, present in every edition) moved the respectable based on their organic and slum dub. Later the extreme Sullivan King The Hangar Stage thundered, closing a first day at full intensity and full of highlights.

The night would extend with the various electronic sets on each of the stages, highlighting the reggae-dub numbers (Dubai and Kongo Natty) on The Beach stage, which, as its name indicates, invites you to dance without shoes on a field of sand and psychedelically illuminated trees.

Kneecap – Photo by Elisa Morar

Friday, July 17.

For the brave ones who can stand up at that time, the mornings have a special charm in Electric Castle. While at night you can do coffee until late, when the sun rises and begins to warm slightly it is a good time to visit this amusement park to let the sensations fly.

The gastronomic proposal is infinite, accessible and of excellence and the commercial center of independent entrepreneurs (some of them really creative) that is set up in the halls of the castle is another attraction worth highlighting.

The omnipresent ferris wheel filters the sun’s rays and the lake that surrounds the castle is a solarium that is as decadent as it is trendy. In the background the beats of what never stops: music.

The day’s program is a luxury step menu. You can start at the opening of the main stage with the locals and popular Bush who captivated with their emotional pop. A second successful step was to approach the Hangar stage to see Peacefulthe Argentinians now living in Madrid who understood the grunge pop game like no one else and with freshness and conviction gave one of the shows of the day.

For those who already needed a main course, the show House of Protection It was the ideal appetizer, mixing metal with industrial electronics at high heat.

The main stage was dressed up for two of this year’s most acclaimed headliners: the histrionic Teddy Swims and the inevitable ones at every self-respecting festival Twenty One Pilots. The Brazilian set Mochakk He put the finishing touch to such a string to the delirium of the respectable. But things also happened before: the Danish producer Kölsch got everyone going on stage/dance floor Booha, as did dubstep pioneers Skream & Benga that thundered with bass from the Hangar stage.

Saturday, July 18

Although attendance at the festival is even on all days, Saturday’s is always the largest. Although the capacity is getting closer to its limit, today another positive characteristic of Electric Castle: Although it is a massive festival, it is rare to feel overwhelmed, the musical proposal is of a high level in each stage and as we said, so are its attractions outside of music, this means that the circulation of the public is constant and everything acquires a very interesting dynamic to experience.

Added to this are already classic features of the festival, such as the “surprise show”. It is a spontaneous acoustic that happens in the shadow of a large tree in the middle of the property. In previous years people like Morcheeba or Noga Erez performed there, this year it was British rockers Nothing But Thieveswho would later thunder on the main stage, doing justice to their significant popularity in Romania, which led them to participate in Electric Castle in previous editions.

At dusk the Backyard Stage captured attention with the Londoners’ show honeyglaze. Strange and attractive in equal measure, the trio developed their deformed and creative rock in which acid melodies and spoken word alternate.
Later on the same stage they would perform one of the crown jewels of the Swedish scene today. Sunnan He brought his incidental, romantic and velvety soul, of indomitable psychedelia to a stage surrounded by illuminated trees. This is cinema.

Underground classics also take place here and witness to this statement was the festive and spectacular session of the hip hop pioneer Egyptian Lover on The Beach stage, which acted as an ideal preview for the main numbers of the night, especially for the brutal concert by Chase & Statussome old acquaintances in Electric Castle.

The sound in each stage is excellent, but this one from Chase & Status is almost supernatural in terms of clarity and sound pressure.
For those who needed electronics through their veins, the night did nothing but bring joy: KILIMANJARO and Deep Dish one after the other until 5am, time when nothing would end because the deliberately partying sets of Ozlemek and Gun Pink.

Photo by Marius Vasile

Sunday, July 19

While the world was waiting for the World Cup final (which was broadcast on the mega screens of the Hangar stage with a good presence of Spanish and Argentine fans) the music continued in Bontida and late in the afternoon Oddisee set the ideal dash of finesse and groove.

On the main stage’s most explosive day, popular local acts Om The Moon and Vita de Vie They warmed up the tables with songs that are part of the DNA of Romanian music in recent decades.

dogstar They brought their alternative rock to the main stage, filling the space that Wet Leg unfortunately left vacant, absent due to illness.

At night, the entire road is paved for The Cure make history once again. As soon as Robert Smith steps on stage, time seems to stop. Just as his voice appears after long introductions in some of the most resonant songs in Crawley’s repertoire, the sound The Cure It acts like an ether that encompasses sensations that immediately possess the audience. After a happily exhausting weekend like this, what better than being able to rest in the romanticism, in the deep and beautiful melancholy of The Cure.

Every hit is welcome, every wink from the stage is from heart to heart. As if it were the final speech at the high school graduation, the show The Cure It resembles a painting in progress, a work of art that shows edges of the band’s artistic personality, but also brings out the emotions of the listener, following a kind of imaginary script in which time – what has been experienced, personal history – and its curvatures are total protagonists.

The activity continued on the secondary stages, but the end of the show The Cure It left a feeling of emotional satiety consistent with another successful edition of one of the best festivals on the continent.