Juicy Beats #13

August 7th, 2008 | filed under: Events, Reviews | Stumble it!

Last weekend i went to visit this great festival again, taking place in the Westfalenpark of the city of Dortmund, where this year’s very successful Loveparade was held. Due to organizational trouble (LP was only two weeks ago) Juicy Beats promoters even had to cancel and re-book various acts. Nevertheless the line-up was as good and versatile as it has ever been. Which means you had the chance to choose between 14 floors, each one adressing a different style, from hip hop over dancehall, funk and jazz to eletronic and techno. That is the actually the idea behind Juicy Beats, covering a good range of music, bringing loads of different people together and represent the quality and versatility of contemporary music.

Even though the weather was to become quite rainy nobody seemed to hesitate about coming, so the park was as filled as every year. There was however lots of space, and even in the evening when places got crowded, you always had enough room for dancing (and breathing).

Luckily, weather was still good in the afternoon so we had a good time checking the different floors and chilling at the main stage, where eventually my act of the day was going to play: Sonar Kollektiv Orchestra. At about 5 pm the band (made of 15 musicians) launched their show with some classic tunes from the Sonar Kollektiv label. Awesome! Seeing them live, especially singer Clara Hill, who must be one of my favourite female artists, was very uplifting. Highlight of their show were in my opinion the re-jazz of »I got somebody new« by Georg Levin and the acoustic version of Âme’s »Rej« where the crowd started screaming (which i find pretty uncommon for a jazz act).

Afterwards we went to see some other stages like the Worldbeat floor, which was sponsored by German radio station »Funkhaus Europa«, or the Funky Bobbystyle floor, where some popular funk and disco got us into dancing mood. (how could Michael Jackson’s Thriller not boost your mood?)

The later the evening the darker the music and so we went to dance to some groovy deep house at Hotel Shanghai’s dancefloor (local club in the city of Essen) where at that time Langenberg (buddy of Manuel Tur) was dropping tunes. Musically on a similar level was the last destination of our tour, the circus, where head of Juicy Beats Carsten Helmich and his friend Ingo Sänger (both part of the Taxi Club) were playing. Solid deep rocking stuff, although the sound system seemed a little to quiet. I have to admit though that i was pretty wasted by that time…

Tiredness became also my biggest enemy on our way home, that took ridiculous 3 hours. Anyway, the festival was once again amazing. I have to thank anyone who’s been with me for a great time. Photos will be online soon… Stay tuned and until next year :-)