Melt! 2005 Festival

This year the Melt! festival, one of the most interesting annual German open-air music events, turned 8 years old, of which for the last 6 it has invariably taken place in Ferropolis, the so-called 'City of Steel' – a technogenic open-air museum town that was built in 1999 as one of the Expo 2000 projects. Surrounded on all sides by five enormous excavators (up to 120 metres long), built back in the 1950s for digging canals and serving as the main museum exhibits, Ferropolis lies on the shore of a small lake, Gremmin, and represents a real paradise (technogenic, of course) both for lovers of nature and heavy industry of all kinds, and for those keenly interested in the outcomes of what has happened over the year in contemporary music. That said, many sophisticated Germans treat 'Melt' without much reverence and joke that maybe at least for its 10th anniversary the festival team will finally arrange a convenient way of getting there.

The text was originally published in the October issue of DJmag ©

In fact, to the taste of the 10,000 young people who flock every year to this industrial-musical den, the venue for the festival could not have been better chosen. Ferropolis lies in the very heart of eastern Germany – an hour and a half's drive from Berlin, as well as from Dresden, 35 minutes from Leipzig, about 4 hours from Munich. Those travelling under their own steam are quite happy with the Deutsche Bahn (railway), combined with a bus from Dessau to Gräfenhainichen – from there it's a stone's throw. A bicycle, a tent, a crate of beer, a rucksack of food and 10 friends – without this survival kit hardly anyone goes to 'Melt'. Incidentally, particularly pedantic guests can always find the festival by its exact address: Ferropolisstrasse, 1.

In advance sale a ticket costs 42 euros (parking and camping included); on site the same three-day ticket already costs 60 euros, while those who wish to stay only one night must pay 35. Still, looking at the list of performing bands and projects, a cold sweat breaks out on your forehead, and the financial side of the matter starts to seem something quite insignificant.

The question of headliners is not an easy one to settle for yourself here; almost immediately you get the impression that on Melt's 5 stages they all are headliners. That said, this year the press paid particular attention to the young guitar discoveries of the spring, Maximo Park and Bloc Party, to ex-Moloko vocalist Roisin Murphy, to German youth favourites Wir Sind Helden, to the new project of the band The Notwist with Californian hip-hoppers Themselves (13&God), and so on down the list: Phoenix, Underworld, Andreas Dorau, Mouse On Mars, Fischerspooner, Tocotronic, Gus Gus, Benjamin Diamond and so on and so forth, not counting a good fifty DJs and purely electronic projects. Fitting company, no doubt about it – the German magazine Intro (the festival organiser) did a splendid job.

No sooner has the first act, The Dalles – who won this year's demo-recording contest for young artists – finished their set on the main stage than a real storm begins. Everyone gathered still has fresh in their memory the events of a week earlier, when a hurricane with a downpour to boot literally swept away several festival stages in western Germany. The forebodings, it has to be said, are extremely bad, especially since history seems ready to repeat itself. The musicians save their instruments and combos, clusters of speakers sway like pendulums, the technical crew drive streams of water off the stage with mops. An hour later the downpour ends even more unexpectedly, and the sun comes out – everyone is doubly happy, everyone except the band Maximo Park, who were specially moved to the start of the line-up – they need to fly urgently to England in the evening. Charismatic and good-natured Paul Smith and company nevertheless take the stage for a few minutes and, backed by workers methodically wielding mops, perform an acoustic version of their hit 'Graffiti'. Everyone is in wild raptures – Maximo Park are loved fiercely in Germany, despite the fact that their debut album 'A Certain Trigger' came out only a couple of months ago. The musicians apologise like mad and run off; seems they missed their plane after all, and 'Melt' finally unfolds in full force.

On the Gemini stage the new stars of Berlin's Kitty-Yo perform – Chikinki. They sound very much in the spirit of the latest acts in Rayk Hölzel's roster – Sex In Dallas and Rhythm King And Her Friends; the music is okay, but the look of the band itself (especially the keyboardist) is really something. The best performances on the big stage over the two days were without doubt Phoenix and 13&God, possibly in my subjective perception too, but these two are sure to be remembered for a long time. About Phoenix my German friends joke that in Germany this is a favourite girl-band; at their last show at Berlin's Maria Am Ostbahnhof the club was simply packed with screaming girls. Here the forces are clearly balanced – 'Everything Is Everything' is sung in chorus by absolutely everyone, young and old. 13&God is clearly a most interesting band in terms of live sound and a rather refined blend of hip-hop, jazz and guitar songwriting. Watching Themselves, in the end, is simply unimaginably un-boring; it's very amusing how these guys gently 'bleat' with something in their mouths that sounds like a vocoder. Phoenix are replaced by Tocotronic with songs from their latest album 'Pure Darf Niemals Siegen'; the songs are slow and pensive like an autumn forest, but I find it hard to concentrate and get into their set – 10 thousand happy, shouting, running people playing football right on the concert ground are not conducive to that. I urgently need to dance. I wander over to the Big Wheel stage. Fitting company is expected here – Ada & Meteope, Darshan Jesrani, Steve Bug, Wighnomy Bros, Akufen, Chloé, Sid Le Rock and Jake Fairley. I obviously won't physically be able to hear them all, but it's pleasantly thrilling all the same. Darshan Jesrani plays, half of the duo Metro Area, and I immediately understand that getting away from this sweet guy in the green cap will be very hard. I can't in the slightest pin down the time period of his records; the music is very close to early Chicago house, but when a 10-minute minimalist loop suddenly gives birth to some unimaginably familiar disco passage and the track then starts to sound like a live Curtis Mayfield ensemble, there are no words to describe this beauty. Darshan doesn't shun some very strange italo-disco either, thereby giving the dancers a lot of joy. Environ, whichever way you look at it, is a mighty force! After Darshan, Steve Bug warms up and plugs in his gear, but for some reason listening to the latter quickly gets boring. Steve dissolves entirely into his perfectionist minimal-house sound; it all seems great, but there are too few events in this music, and so many of them on the neighbouring stages.

I glance at the schedule and decide to go back to the main stage; Bloc Party are about to begin their set there. On the way I drop into the Gemini stage, the second-largest at 'Melt'. Ali and Basti have already firmly settled in here – the Tiefschwarz brothers; the number of people is unimaginable, though there's not much point in pushing through. Tiefschwarz play dense riffy electro-house that sometimes quite successfully passes itself off as electroclash. And it's obvious that the festival atmosphere has relaxed them to the utmost; Ali sometimes doesn't even notice when a track ends and the music stops. Still, the public is quite good-natured and reacts to what's happening with a cheerful howl of 'Oooooaaaaaaaaa!' This entertainment isn't for me, especially since from the main stage the chords of 'Silent Alarm' are already carrying over – the album for which Bloc Party received all this year's raptures from journalists passionately eager to be the first to find the new 'Franz Ferdinands'. The drum rolls of the mad Matt Tong must be audible in Berlin itself. In fact, the band's drummer is already a quite sufficient reason to attend this band's concert. He also gets the main applause from the audience at the end, though on the second day the jackpot is scooped by the singing drummer of Mouse On Mars – now there's someone truly impossible to forget. It's impossible to find fault with Bloc Party's performance, everything sounds just as dense and grooving as on the album, the crowd leaps frantically in convulsions – every song is recognised from the first guitar riff. Someone, in a burst of joy, fires a glowing torch with luminescent liquid into the face of vocalist and guitarist Kele Okereke; Kele clearly doesn't appreciate the humour and takes offence. The band stops playing, and the public in turn takes offence at Kele. It's a joke, Kele! And it doesn't even hurt. The impression of the performance is slightly spoiled, but the band finally acts wisely and continues the concert. The festival's main prize for taming the joyful luminescent hooligans goes in the end to the inimitable vocalist of the Icelanders Gus Gus. He simply and with a smile, his golden moustache glinting, points a finger at the one who threw it and, right in the middle of a song, dives onto the heads of the audience to catch and scold the hooligan. On the whole, though, the hour-and-a-half Gus Gus concert was one of the biggest disappointments of 'Melt'. Neither the multicoloured moustaches of half the group, nor the pretty vocalist pulling angry faces, nor even the pineapple costume and the downing of a bottle of Smirnoff on stage will, it seems, save them from the final diagnosis: Gus Gus today is the completely bygone 90s. In any case, Gus Gus – dancing and only occasionally paying attention to their synthesizers – clearly prove it. On top of that they never do perform the beloved 'Lady Shave' – how can they? The prize and the title 'Franz Ferdinand of Melt 2005' is meanwhile taken by the German band The Robocop Kraus. I don't think this needs any additional comment, but the guys really are the best.

Everything proceeds in its usual order; Roisin Murphy is held up for an hour, again equipment problems. Meanwhile I debate with the Germans about how to pronounce her name correctly – Roshin, Roisin – turns out that in Germany they have the same problems as we do. Because of this delay the unluckiest of all, in the end, are Fischerspooner – they come on stage in their crazy rags already towards morning, around 4, and to Casey Spooner's shouts of 'What's Up Motherfuckers!!!' the tired crowd reacts with caustic giggling. 'We already want to sleep. You're the motherfucker yourself!' I too am already ready to drop into sleep, in connection with which it occurs to me that Casey's outfit resembles the stage costume of some Valery Leontiev at his anniversary concert. The guitar electro-punk from 'Fischer and Spooner' sounds somehow thin and feeble. Maybe some other time…

One of the best DJ sets unexpectedly happens in the morning after the first day of the festival. Behind the decks are friends Erobique (International Pony) and Justus Köhncke – to watch this without laughing and without dancing is impossible. Both are around 35–40; the slightly plump Carsten Meyer (Erobique) plays only old seven-inches with old reggae and very strange pop songs; Justus, a lanky, overgrown country-cottage type in shorts and flip-flops, smiles tenderly with a toothless mouth and constantly twiddles the knobs on the mixer, switching on all sorts of effects. In the end Justus doesn't manage to mix practically a single record, but this doesn't bother him in the slightest – he keeps running to the neighbouring bar for beer and, while they pour him a glass, sings and skips around the practically deserted 'Melt'. The 'old-timers' are very emotional; with every song one hugs the other and nearly weeps. The public doesn't want to let them go and a good thousand people chant: 'Spiel, spiel, spiel', as security literally drives the good-natured old fellows away from the decks. Despite the day ahead, it is precisely this picture that stays in my memory as the final one.

After 'Melt' early in the morning I try to get to Dessau on anything I can, and here I realise the justice of my friends' jibes – the first bus on weekends leaves at 10.30, and it's only 6 now. And I really want to go home. Luckily, a taxi stops and the German guys who called it are not at all against giving me a lift too. I talk with them, and suddenly it turns out that these are Dirk Völler and Falk Hesse, in fact the main organisers of the fest. For me this is a great stroke of luck, and I try to find out as many details as possible from them. Falk is already falling asleep, Dirk is unusually talkative, tells me that 'Melt' doesn't bring in any particular profit, and the organisers need the 10,000 visitors to cover the costs of the line-up and pay everyone for their work. And anyway it's just one of many, albeit the largest, side-projects of Intro magazine. 'This time we came out almost on the edge in terms of finances,' he cheerfully reports and immediately shares Intro magazine's new plans for the autumn Popkomm. Dirk, laughing, doesn't believe me that I'll send him an article about 'Melt' in a Russian magazine and at the end warns that he won't forget and will most certainly be waiting. Das ist für dich Dirk. Keep on meltin'!.