Summer Festival Series Prt. 6:
Sunrise Festival
Kolobrzeg, Poland
(July 24-26)
The Sunrise Festival takes place on the North coast of Poland in the Baltic Seaside town called Kolobrzeg. Last year it was held on July 25-27th. If you have been following my Summer Festival Series of blogs, you will know that July was a busy month of debauchery for me. The first week of July I partied it up at ran with the bulls in Pamplona, Spain. Followed by 4-days of intense partying July 9-12th at Europe’s biggest music festival, Exit Festival in Serbia. And the following weekend attended Germany’s famous, Love Parade. Not to mention countless nights between at pubs and clubs a long the way. So as you can imagine by the end of July I was hurting pretty bad and any normal person would probably have thrown in the towel at this point… but me?? No way. How often does someone get to spend 4-months in Europe right? So I decided to suck it up and keep on trucking (with a little persuasion from my Polish friend Jessika who was trying to get me to come to Sunrise).
(My Friend Jess on the left and Adriana on the right)
Sunrise festival is more geared towards Trance, and to be honest I’m not a huge fan of Trance. But I can tell you this much, I am a huge fan of Polish girls, Polish Beer, Polish girls, and Polish Pierogies. Regardless of the fact that the majority of the festival was Trance oriented, there were still quite a few big names in House music. So with that I said what the heck.
The headliners for Sunrise 2008 consisted of the following; Tocadisco, John Aquaviva, Armin Van Buuren, Markus Schulz, Rank1, Cosmic Gate, Tiesto. The festival was not quite as big as other festivals in Europe, I’d say there was probably about 15,000 – 20,000 in attendance. It was split up between Friday and Saturday with two stages each day, the “Fire Stage” and the “Water Stage”. The Fire stage was a lot bigger and more open. The Water stage was somewhat like an amphitheater. Both areas were completely outdoors and luckily the weather was beautiful the entire time.
On the Sunday was a massive beach party with a huge sound system and dj’s (I mentioned that Kolobrzeg is on the coast of the Baltic Sea). Although we were hung over and tired as hell by Sunday we missioned it to the beach and had an awesome time. I would say the beach after party was probably my favorite part of the whole festival.
Aside from the beach Tiesto absolutely rocked the festival with his killer set. What was interesting about this festival compared to some of the others I attended was that there were lots of theatrics. Each headliner DJ had a big introduction with acrobats, dancers, fireworks, flames, explosions, an introductory track (a little cheesy perhaps) , etc. It was quite a production. they also had motocross dirt bikes do a big midnight show plus fireworks.
All in all I had a blast, and somehow managed to keep going regardless of the fact that I had been pushing my self to the limit for over a month.
This year I am hoping to get back to Europe for Exit Festivals 10 Year anniversary, and seeing as Sunrise is on July 24-26th I may have to try and make it again. This years headliners include; ATB, Benjamin Bates, Eddie Halliwell, Eddie Thoneick, Fergie, Ferry Corsten, Funkerman, Marco V, Mark Mendes (from Toronto!), Rank 1, Sander van Doorn, and Sebastian Leger, to name a few.
For More info check out
www.sunrisefestival.pl
Aaron
“Getting down to business, so you can get to the business of getting down”?
Look to the left, or click here for more blogs by Aaron Neilson-Belman