Selected Notes: Horst Festival 2022
Photography: Iollann Ó Murchú
The Belgian festival continues to garner a reputation of cunning curation within a brutalist utopia.
Friday, April 29
In Vilvoorde, somewhere just north of Brussels, a crowd has descended upon an old, overgrown estate. The white skies lay congruent with the two power plant towers that stand tall above the site. Cavernous buildings that were formerly occupied by soldiers who helped assemble apparatus for military communication, are now occupied by nighttime revellers as they bounce between the compact arrangement of stages. Occasionally, the sun rears its beautiful, golden head over the smoke-filled site.
While at the Trippo Fiso! stage for D. Dan, which has assumed the unofficial ‘Main Stage’ status, I am approached by a local called Matthieu. “Where are you from?” he asks me, as lights race through the long room, striking down as quickly as they disappear.
“Ireland,” I say.
“People from Ireland know about Horst?” he asks incredulously, in his Belgian-French accent.
“Trust me, we’ve brought our finest ambassadors.” By this, I of course mean a cohort of wholesome, funny, and debaucherous feens, roughly twenty of them. They stand on the platform beside the booth in an assortment of costumes such as pink wigs and banana suits and I rarely see them anywhere else for the weekend.
“You should see the gaff we’re staying in,” one of them tells me. “I was staying in an 8-person dorm in Italy last week for 40 euro a night. Now I’m staying in a four-storey gaff with a jacuzzi and a pool table for 50 euro a night.”
Saturday, April 30
Saturday is a day for the dreamers and overthinkers. What’s the difference? Hope and despair, maybe. Naive, in any case.
I walk down the long alleyway to the Turning Circles stage where Mika Oki, Space Afrika, Sky H1, and upsammy are playing over the course of the day in a shipping container-sized room. I stay here, for large portions, in peace as large installations hang above my head. upsammy is clashing with HMT Hard Cru’s farewell set, but Sky H1’s mesmeric set ensures that one attendee is “never listening to donk ever again.”
The hours of introspection has caught up with one reveller that I am talking to.
“I think I get in my head a bit when I listen to any ambient stuff,” he says.
“Well, that would almost be the point,” I say.
“I’m struggling with that kind of thing at the moment.”
“That’s something for you to combat then.” A thought is always quicker than the thinker themselves, so stop running.
Sunday, May 1
I’m back with the Irish cohort and they have left their station at the Trippo Fiso! stage. GiGi FM’s set at Hovering Caress Amère under hanging breast-shaped lights sees one of them incessantly referring to key-yem-icals while white residue hangs from his left nostril; another keeps shouting “WASTING AWAY IN MARGARITAVILLE”; and two others are hunched down close to the footprint-filled floor playing dice. “I owe him three sessions in the sauna,” one of them begrudgingly states.
For the last set of the weekend, we pack ourselves into the celestial tepee that is the Moon Ra stage, for Driss Bennis. I am only able to see wide smiles through the thick layer of smoke and flashing lights as an unrelenting set unravels.
“This is how cults start,” one of the Irish lads shouts, and for a second, I actually believe him.
