Extrema Outdoor Festival Details...

Extrema Outdoor Festival, AquaBest, Eindhoven, Netherlands

Extrema Outdoor was a huge Dutch Festival held at The Rai in Amsterdam every year.

On Saturday July 18 Dutch party organisation Extrema, welcomed 45.000 party people for the 14th edition of their famous outdoor festival “Extrema Outdoor”. For the 7th year in a row the festival was completely sold out. Not a big surprise when you have names such as Deadmau5, James Zabiela, Axwell, Sander Kleinenberg, Steve Angello, Dirty South, Wally Lopez, James Holden, Dave Clarke, Tiga, Josh Wink, Funkerman and many others on your line up!

The location for “Extrema Outdoor” was recreation area “Aquabest” in Best. Best is a small city that’s next to Eindhoven, located in the south of The Netherlands. All stages at the party area are build next to a big lake and for this year Extrema had something special. Normally it’s a pretty long walk from one side from the lake till the other one, so for this year Extrema had the worlds biggest temporary bridge! So people could get easier and a lot quicker to the different areas. In the middle of the stage there was even a little area with a DJ and space to dance as well!

On Saturday morning there were still some dark clouds above the south part of The Netherlands, but by the time we arrived at the festival area, it started to get sunny! After parking the car we had to walk for a bit, then we picked up our press passes and after a quick security check we got in. And still no rain, but lots of sun! Awesome festival weather!

We first walked to the Future Funk area to see Spanish DJ / producer Wally Lopez. The stage was pretty packed already and lots of people were having an awesome time! The whole stage looked awesome, but that was not a surprise since Extrema is an organisation that is known for having lots of great decorations at their parties and festivals. When we were in front of the stage, all of a sudden the crowd moved back and some dressed up people walked through the audience. There were even some horses, pretty awesome!

Wally Lopez played a bit longer, since we’ve heard that Dirty South was stuck in a traffic jam. But he wasn’t too late, since he arrived about 15 minutes after he was supposed to be on, so it wasn’t too bad. The Australian DJ took over the decks from Mr. Lopez and started his set with some pumping beats!

We stayed for a bit to see Dirty South and to listen to his set. He played pretty good and the crowd loved it as well. The weather was still good, so that was a very nice bonus as well! After a while we got a bit thirsty, so it was time to get some tokens for drinks and food. There were plenty of places to get those tokens and we didn’t had to wait long at all, in fact, we didn’t had to wait at all! Plus the tokens were for both food and drinks. It’s always pretty irritating when you have to get different tokens for food and drinks, so this was easy!

We decided to check out one of the other areas and since we were pretty close to the Lakeside area, we had a little look over there. When we entered the Lakeside tent it was Lee Burridge who was playing, but it was almost the end of his set, so we also witnessed the first few minutes of Joris Voorn’s set.

Because Axwell was starting with his set pretty soon, we left the Lakeside area and walked back to the Future Funk area. In the meantime we got some yummy fresh fruit and walked between some hammocks with people that were relaxing. Shame there were no more left! But you can’t have everything of course!

The Future Funk area was really packed now and Dirty South was really rocking it! He just played ‘How Soon Is Now’, a new track that he made together with David Guetta and Sebastian Ingrosso. And Dirty South was having a good time himself as well. Always nice to see DJ’s enjoying themselves during their set! At the end of his set he played a cool and groovy (bootleg) remix of “Flight 643” by Tiësto!

Not too long after that Swedish House Mafia member Axwell took over the decks! He started with some tracks such as “Leave The World Behind”, a track from the Swedish House Mafia together with Dutchman Laidback Luke, “TV Rock feat Rudy – In The Air (Axwell Remix)” and a mash up of Underworld’s “Born Slippy” with the Eric Prydz track “Pjanoo”.

After a while we got hungry, so time for some food! So after a little walk over the festival area, we arrived at the massive food area! There was a lot of choice, so pizza, fries, Mexican food, noodles, sandwiches, you name it! There was even a DJ who played some latin beats there! For the rest there were some dancers and a live band who played music as well! So enough entertainment when you were waiting for your food or already eating your food. We got ourselves some pizza slices and we found a nice spot in the grass to enjoy our food and to rest a bit.

When we finished our pizza, it was time to walk to the main stage to see Deadmau5, since he was about to start. We walked next to the lake and from there you had a nice view on the huge bridge, with the letters “Extrema” in the middle. Very cool!

When we were almost at the main stage, we saw that it was packed! So busy! Deadmau5 just started his set and we noticed plenty of people in the crowd with cool Deadmau5 masks, that were handed out for free to the audience! Funny! Of course he was wearing his famous Deadmau5 mask himself as well! In the meantime he started playing his own Deadmau5 track “Ghosts And Stuff”.

Some other stuff that he played: “The Reward Is Cheese” (Deadmau5 vs Jelo), his “Harder Faster Better Stronger” remix (Daft Punk) and his own “Sometimes Things Get, Whatever”.

The problem at big festivals is that there is a pretty big chance that your favorite DJ’s play at different stages at the same time! And indeed, we wanted to see both Deadmau5 and Steve Angello, but they were clashing. So after watching Deadmau5 for a while, we decided to walk back to the Future Funk area for some more Swedish House Mafia! The quickest way was to do this via the huge bridge over the lake, so that’s what we did!

Just a little bit later we were back at the Future Funk stage and Steve Angello was already busy with his set. Axwell was still on stage as well and he was checking out Steve’s set as well from the backside of the stage.

The area was even busier than before, so many people were dancing and having a good time. And there was still sun and not even one drop of rain! Perfect festival weather! See, never trust the weather forecast!

While Dirty South and Axwell were having a conversation on the stage and making fun in the meantime, Steve played a new remix from the “Pancake” classic “Don’t Turn Your Back On Me”. One of the producers of this track is Erick E and he was already waiting backstage, since after Steve’s set he and DJ Roog had to close the Future Funk stage as “Housequake”.

The last track in Steve Angello’s set was “Missing Rotterdam”, a track by Abel Ramos and Miss Melody with the vocals of the Everything But The Girl track “Missing”. Steve played the bootleg version that Axwell made a while ago.

When Housequake (Erick E and Roog) started, we walked back to the Lakeside area to see a bit of James Zabiela and Sander Kleinenberg as well. We just saw the last few minutes of Zabiela and then Dutchman Sander Kleinenberg came one stage.

Sander Kleinenberg played tracks such as “Drop The Pressure” by Mylo, “2 Months Off” by Underworld and of course the new Sander Kleinenberg track “This Is Our Night”.

He had some cool visuals on the screens behind him as well and the whole tent was pretty much filled with dancing people! There were still a few areas which we didn’t had a chance to visit yet, so at the end we decided to walk to the Royal Dutch stage to see what was going on there!

When we arrived at the Royal Dutch stage we saw that the whole stage was in Delftware blue and it looked like a big windmill, so indeed, Royal Dutch for sure! Sunnery James & Ryan Marciano were playing for a big audience as well. It looked really cool to see people dance during the sunset!

At 22:35 there was a big end show, but since we didn’t wanted to be stuck in traffic, we decided to leave a bit before that. But … I was lucky since when I was just home Dutch TV station BNN broadcasted some highlights of Extrema Outdoor, so there I could see the awesome end show! Lots of light- and smoke effects! Of course plenty of lasers and a lot of fireworks! Just check on YouTube, since you just have to see this spectacular show yourself!

At this years Extrema Outdoor, there were 9 different stages and this year there was an extremaly good and various line up. There were some famous names, but there was also space for new and upcoming talent. The huge bridge over the lake was awesome and saved lots of people a lot of time! If you wanted to get coins, food and drinks you didn’t had to wait too long, so no long waiting lines at all! The whole atmosphere was very laidback, if you wanted to chill out there was space enough as well. There were hammocks, Fat Boys or you could just chill out in the grass. The stages looked great, nice decorations and from what I could tell from the BNN live broadcasting on TV, the end show was super awesome as well! Plus the whole day not even 1 little drop of run! What else can you wish for Looking forward to Extrema Outdoor 2010 already!