Event Review: Revolution 909

Written by Boudewijn van der Laan

R909 Flyers

On Sunday the 12th June, the first day of Pentecost, a new music festival called Revolution 909 took place in Amsterdam. For the first edition the organisation invited Bart Skils, Umek and Gregor Tresher amongst others. BnB was present and reports back to you...

909 Revolution was a one stage Techno festival ready to capicitate 1.909 attendees and was organized in the Amsterdamse Bos (The forest of Amsterdam), near the city centre. The entire week people were guessing if the weather would be good enough this Pentecost weekend, with storms being forecasted.

R909 Crowd

Sunday it turned out to be wonderful outside. Normally the Amsterdamse Bos is a nice quiet place to go to, but this Sunday some Techno legends took over the forest and made it a great festival where you just couldn’t stand still. The day started off easy with Amsterdam’s favorite Bart Skils. He hosts his own club nights in Amsterdam’s former favorite club 11 and the Paradiso and very successful festivals like VOLTT, Static and Traffic. He played some good beats with some nice summer tones. Bart Skils is always a nice and solid DJ which gets you going. A perfect starter of a lovely day!

After Skils, Ramon Tapia took place behind the decks. ‘El Carlitto’ has a very broad taste in music and has great technical skills. His Latin background (Chilean father) was notable in his DJ set and people were leaving their rugs and put on their dancing shoes.

R909 2

At 16:00 Dj Umek took over and everybody knew the BPM would rise as soon as he pushed the play button. Therefore the build-up of the Timetable was very well done by the organization. The Slovenian Umek started as planned with high tempo Techno with some of his best tracks. He’s known for his numerous releases produced for almost every big record label. You may know he runs his own label: 1605 Music Therapy. And on this chilled out festival day the crowd was getting wild and everybody was getting in a flow only he can get you in.

Next up on the roster was Gregor Tresher, known from the best-selling track of 2008 at Beatport : A Thousand Nights. That is only a shred of his entire work. His actual breakthrough was when he started producing on behalf of Anthony Rother’s label. Nowadays you can see him play all around the world, today we had the honor to see him play in Amsterdam. He played some massive Techno tracks this day, he really has his very own sound!

R909 3

The Swedish Dj Christian Smith was the next fellow to take place in front of everyone. He already DJ’s, produces and has is own label (Tronic) for 15 years. Christian Smith lives in Sao Paolo and that is why you can understand he only joins us during the European summers… He chose a wonderful day! The public really liked his old school techno, and despite it was time for supper everybody remained at the stage.

After Christian Smith played his last track, Vince Watson was up next. He played a live set, and the MC really wanted to make that clear (quite funny)! He plays very melodious and seeing him play on his synthesizer was very special. His dark, tuneful sounds make it seem his roots are in Detroit. He is actually very Scottish, despite he lives in the Netherlands now. Great live set by Vince Watson, some state Laurent Garnier is his biggest fan..!

R909 3

If the crowd wasn’t satisfied yet, a nice dessert was coming up. Dj Remy from The Hague (NL) had the honor to end this great day. You could see people glance at their watches and look surprised it was already coming to an end.

He is one of the first Dutch House and Techno Dj’s and also very talented in his work. He too played some great rough Techno and everybody was gathering their last bit of energy while it was getting dark. Dj Remy build up his set very well and when the fireworks exploded the crowd kept cheering for this Dutch Techno legend.

R909 41

A very good warm up for the Loveland festival that is about to come later this summer and which already has one of the sickest line up of the season. I expect to see you next year on 909 Revolution!

Check out the photos on our Facebook page as well and be sure to tag yourself!