Conference:

Yesterday was a good day at Eurosonic. I kicked off the conference with a talk about ‘Green Festival Communication’. I know, that doesn’t sound quite sexy at all, but there were two people there from ID&T/Sensation and the Melt! Festival in Germany, and I was interested in hearing what they had to say about ‘being green’ and sustainability, because I never figured those kind of festivals as being very environmentally friendly, to be honest. It was a real inspiring talk, and a lot more exciting than I’d imagine though.
ID&T started of by telling what exactly they did in terms of these topics, and a lot of great examples passed by that I’m already jealous of. For example, all the volunteers of the festival were approached if they’d like to have a fun day with like-minded people and the organization to help out doing some work in the local environment. Everything from cleaning parks to helping out at a farm, painting sheds etcetera. It sounded (and looked) like the people were having a genuinely good time. Whether they really only did it for the fun of it or for the reward, I don’t know, but I like the idea of getting people connected with the local environment in this way and showing the locals that the organization is involved in what is happening around them.

Another great example can from the Melt! Festival. They actually won an award for being one for being the most environment-friendly festival, as I understood. Besides doing cool stuff like having a train run zig-zag through Germany, straight to the festival site and where people can rent a bed to sleep during the festival, they also noticed that a lot of the time, drivers of artists are waiting for a long time at the site, until they can go to the next spot. They thought it’d be a good idea to give the drivers some driving lessons in how to reduce the usage of fuel. This was all done in a very fun way, with drivers liking the idea of having something to do and not just hanging around to getting some tips, and speaking with people about their work.

Just like myself, a lot of people tend to instantly yawn when hearing subjects like ‘being green’ and ‘sustainability’, the speakers where also aware of that and gave some good tips about communicating to the audience about these things. First off: make sure everybody internally in your organization knows what these topics mean to your organization and festival. If there’s no internal support, there won’t be external support. Second: there’s a thin line between under- and over-communication: explain to little, and people won’t understand what you’re talking about. Talk too much, people get bored. But most importantly: make it fun for people. Explain why you want to do something, and make if fun and easy for others to get involved.

After that, I had to support Incubate’s Joost of course and went to take a look at the ‘Crossmediaal programmeren’ panel. I liked to hear about the ideas of 3voor12, and the way they create and distribute media in so many ways. Overall, I think the people in the panel where pretty much in agreement of the principles in modern-day communication and content creation. Here and there, Joost tried to spice it up a little with some statements from the background of Incubate. But the basis everyone agreed upon: doing stuff like blogging, sharing audio, video, photo, etcetera: it’s not just marketing, it’s definitely not just sales. It’s telling your own story via blogs and Twitter and all about the things you’re enthusiastic about to people who might be interested in the same stuff.

After that, I went to a “drink with Hein van der Ree” from Buma/Sterma, a panel, so we are told “without political correct answers”. Right. Most of the things I heard were very political correct answers, with everybody having a beer and Hein van der Ree sipping a glass of water. A shame really, I was hoping to hear some bolder statements instead ‘we’re really working hard on innovating and getting all of our members involved in this process’. Ah well, that’s how those things go I suppose.

Music

So, out on the streets and on to the music. I actually saw a couple of pretty good acts yesterday.  I started off with Cashier No. 9 at Huize Maas: a nice indie-folkrock band with some really good tunes and a solid live show. Especially when the band rocked out a little harder, they sounded very driven and put on a good show. Was pretty surprised by the band actually. After that, in the same venue, Zulu Winter from England performed. I had heard the name before, because they gave out a single on Double Denim Records, a nice small record label. Zulu Winter is the act that is probably least experimental on the label (they’re now signed by PIAS by the way), but still I was quite excited. And they didn’t let down. Zulu Winter looked and sounded like they belonged on this stage, in front of a packed audience. Their sound is a bit pretentious, but they’ve really got some strong songs. Reminded me a bit of Wild Beasts actually; some falsetto singing, soulful melodies. Really curious to hear what the album is going to sound like.

After that: on with the shoegazepop of The History of Apple Pie. Which was quite ok. The live sound wasn’t al that good, but the dense layers of guitar feedback, well, can’t go wrong there of course. Plus it’s a funny sight really: two small girls next to two tall, sluggish boys on the stage. I tried to get in to the Bart Constant show after that, but the line outside was crazy, so I stuck to Het Paleis for a while and saw French Films play there: a typical, English indiepop band from, uhm, Finland. Anyways: They gave an energetic show and had the tunes to back for it as well. The formula was simple: steady-as-she-goes indierock with choruses shouted out by all the band members at the same time. Definitely put a smile on my face, as it did to a lot people around me.

I ended with two acts in Vera: synthpop band Niki & The Dove from Stockholm was the first and it reminded me of Austra. The sound was incredibly big, like it was built for a stadium, which actually suited the band pretty well. Niki & The Dove is synthpop at its most theatrical, complete with semi-spiritual dances/moves and faces painted with glitter. Not all their songs are equally memorable, but ‘DJ, Ease My Mind’ especially came out really well. I mean, it’s uncomplicated dance music, but at least it was done really well. After that, saw a little bit of M185 (which was ok), a bit of Clock Opera (actually a bit boring and overdone), but I really wanted to stick around for Stay+, one of the few bands I was actually really excited about seeing this weekend. I’ve been following these guys for quite some time now, and really like the mix of shrill dance music (almost like rave), lovely soundscapes and intense visual images. Tonight was no exception:  I was glad to see the room was pretty full, and that the audience actually went all-out. In the midst of the stage, there was a big screen that displayed abstract visuals next to beautifully shot video clips, and besides it there were only two laptops with guys bent forward behind it. The band kicked off with an incredibly loud drone, to start pumping beats right off after that. The dynamics of the show were especially well: soundscapes were blended in to create suspension, after which cold beats kicked in again. The audience looked ecstatic, and for a shot time I felt like I was in a Hacienda-type club, amidst of the Madchester times. Perfect ending to my night (it wasn’t over yet of course, although I skipped good old Rinus) and for me, the highlight of the evening.

The full debut album ‘Owls‘ of LUIK is currently streaming on 3voor12′s Luisterpaal (they have a brand new website, go check it out)! Owls is going to be released on the 13th of January and it consists of nine songs. Just sit back and be amazed by this great record!

One of the great things is you can see them this coming Thursday at Incubated 13! They are opening for Malcolm Middleton and it’s going to be a great evening. Even though Owls is not yet released, you can already buy the album at Incubated 13. Another great reason to be a part of this amazing evening.

Incubated is a monthly evening full of Incubate worthy music. It’s every first thursday of the month in music venue Paradox, Tilburg. Incubated is this coming thursday on the 5th of January, we hope to see you there and listen to the new LUIK with us!

Peter Broderick‘s new album ‘Music For Confluence‘ is now streaming in it’s entirety at our friends 3voor12. The album will be released at the 25th of November and it’s a great album. The best way to listen to this album is to turn the heater on, grab a cup of steaming hot chocolate and to sit back, relax and enjoy the beautiful music from Peter Broderick.

If you like his music, then you should watch ‘Peter and the Farm‘. Peter Broderick lived on a farm for a week for the Glocal Project of Incubate. He helped a cow gave birth, he went to a slaughterhouse and ofcourse enjoyed the beautiful nature of Brabant. But the most important part was to get inspired to write new songs, which he did. The inspired songs from his stay are in the short film and it’s truly amazing. You can watch it here.

One of our favorite Dutch bands, The Devil’s Blood, have a new album out on November 11th. It’s called ‘The Thousandfold Epicentre‘ and it’s brilliant. And thanks to our good friends at 3VOOR12 you can stream it below. You can tell the band how much you like it here. The Devil’s Blood performed at Incubate in 2008.

The Strange Boys made a new record, and it’s one hell of a record from the six men from Texas. If you listen to it, you will notice it can easily be divided in two different EPs. There is nothing crazy about that, because they recorded half of it with a different producer. You will notice that the first half of the CD is clear and gives a complete picture, almost like a live feeling. The second half  is more of an adventurous and ‘looser’ sound. The songs, the band and the feeling is very southern rock with country/americana influences. A laidback album, with some fine tunes. You can listen to the record on 3voor12 luisterpaal and on Spotify - The Strange Boys – Live Music .

Their first single: The Strange Boys – Me and You

Are you ready for De Herrie van Perry, Red Light Radio, Bob Rusche’s KinkFM X-Rated, 3VOOR12 Tilburg, Oorsmeer Radio, Majjem Radio and many others? We are! Inculeaks radio is all set up and ready to go online this Monday at 0:01 (“Sunday night” that is). For the people in and around Tilburg you can find the Inculeaks radio on 107.00 FM but for people outside, you can listen to it on our main page or listen to the stream here.

We’re stoked to receive all these artists in our studio. You can find the full schedule of artists, crews, dj’s and many more over here.

Check out the Incubate Luisterpaal over at 3VOOR12 below. Here, you can listen (exclusively) to a selection of Incubate-artists’ albums. Isn’t that great!?
3VOOR12 will also host the Hollands Nieuwe stage at Cul de Sac during Incubate. This one features tracks from Megafaun, The War on Drugs, Battles and many more. This is only the first batch so keep checking back for more. Listen to them before clicking this link to get your tickets for Incubate festival 2011! See you next week!

We had our “Program complete” Incu Thursday last week, but with a festival with over 250 artists, program changes are unavoidable! Therefore, another Incu Thursday!

Remember, you can buy your tickets for Incubate 2011 here! And camping tickets as well. Bare in mind the camping tickets are limited!

First of all the bad news: The drummer from Heretic just left the band so will not perform. But we still have three great black/death bands on the bill for Thursday September 16: Aura Noir, Obliteration and Ketzer!

Also, Jos from Lärm has an infected eardrum and therefore can not play for a while on doctor’s advice. But, we have found a suitable replacement for them: the grinders from Groningen from Suffering Quota will replace them. Assück worship!

Suffering Quota – 18/9

Grindcore
Expand to view more info

We can also finally announce the dj’s for the Incubate afterparty in Cul de Sac! For those who don’t want to go home! Afterparties start right after the last band of the evening.

Cul de Sac afterparties:
Monday: DJ Tomski
Tuesday: Kidnap The DJ
Wednesday:  Body 2 Body
Thursday: Kicking The DJ’s
Friday: Le Guess Who? DJ Crew
Saturday: Vera DJ Team

In between the bands, the following DJ’s will be spinning some tunes at Cul de Sac and Kleine Zaal of 013.

Cul de Sac:
Monday: Christiaan Walraven (3VOOR12)
Tuesday: Ingmar Griffioen (3VOOR12)
Wednesday: Body 2 Body
Thursday: Joep Schmitz

013 Kleine Zaal:
Monday: DJ Betonnie (Avonduren)
Tuesday: Stephan van Peursem  (3voor12)
Wednesday: Coco Bryce + Jameszoo
Thursday: Michiel Eikenaar (Anaphylactic shock)

Attending Incubate 2011? Go to Facebook and Last.fm so you can see who of your friends are going as well and stay up to date on the Incubate 2011 news! You can check out the whole line-up on the last.fm page as well. Tune in on our weekly updated Spotify Playlist to listen to the confirmed artists.

You can buy your tickets for Incubate 2011 here! And camping tickets as well.

We will announce new names every week where possible, so keep an eye out for the blog, or your favorite Social Media channel every Thursday at 14:00h. And of course, share with your friends!

(Photo: Omar Souleyman live at Lowlands 2011 by Atze de Vrieze, 3VOOR12)

Perhaps you’ve already noticed yesterday on your social media channels that Bill Drummond has been added to the line-up of Incubate 2011! That’s because 3VOOR12 already gave a scoop including some sneak previews for Incubate 2011, which you can read all about here (in Dutch). Hereby we also officialy announce that Bill Drummond will be present at this years festival for debate on DIY culture as well as his new project The17.

Bill Drummond is best known as co-founder of late 1980s avant-garde pop group The KLF and its 1990s “avant-art” media-manipulating successor, the K Foundation. With The KLF, Drummond scored a number of hits and wrote “The Manual”, a book on how to write a Number 1 hit. The K Foundation is notorious for burning a million pounds in 1994. Drummond’s newest work is The17, an ad hoc choir singing one of Drummond’s pieces. It is a reaction to pre-recorded music and specialises in improvised music.

With the Roadburn 2011 festival just around the corner (this thursday already!), we have selected some of the wisest men in the music business to recommend you their favorites! This is the third part in a five part series. Ingmar Griffioen from 3VOOR12 has selected his 4 must-see acts for the festival!

Gearing up for Roadburn 2011 putting some recommendations in writing isn’t the hard part, narrowing it down to three surely is gruesome. First of all it would be more than foolish to ignore the offerings and cues of curators Sunn O))): http://3voor12.vpro.nl/artikelen/artikel/44622992 (in Dutch). Secondly: after seeing the Black Mountain show @ Incubate 2010 I must also recommend the afterburner with apart from the Canadian psychrockers the simmering Samsara Blues Experiment (soothing the frustration that Roadburn ends there) and two excellent Dutch stonerbands: The Machine and Sungrazer.

Swans
Like curators and doom masters Sunn O))) the group of Michael Gira tends to deliver a physically pounding experience on stage. Seeing the reunited Swans perform at last year’s Le Guess Who? festival I suddenly understood what the ‘noise’ was about. How about originating in the New York postpunk scene of the eighties, progressing through the end of the nineties and thus influencing tons of doom metal, noise, drones and sludge disciples, splitting up, reuniting more than twelve years later in 2010 and still kicking you in the gut, droning your intestines out and keep that up for a thoroughly griping ninety minutes. Well how about that? Certainly they weren’t fucking you about when they put this disclaimer on their site: SWANS ARE NOT DEAD.

A video of one of their live performances in 2010

Check out the comeback-record My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope To The Sky here

Black Math Horseman
I really wanted to see Black Math Horseman last year, but I was robbed of both opportunities by one puffing Islandic volcano. This year they’re back and I definitely won’t be denied their full-on stoner grooving and postmetal riffing psychedelic experience. Producer Scott Reeder (Kyuss/The Obsessed) did some magic on the 2009 recording Wyllt, which is due for a follow-up. Did I mention they have amazing artwork including nice Griffins (!) and a really good looking female singer/bassplayer up their sleeves? More importantly: Sera Timms’ brutal classic vocals and screams give the LA foursome a dark and frightening twist. I’ll definitely start my Roadburn saturday deeply immersed in an hour of BMH.

Live at Emo’s Annex SXSW 3/19/2009 part 2

Ufomammut
Italian stoner giants Ufomammut have rocked Roadburn before, which is a good sign ofcourse. Another good sign is that the people of Roadburn picked their Eve as ‘Roadburn Album of the Year’. Honouring that choice Ufomammut plays the album in its entirety in one and a half hour set at the Midi Theatre. The Italian trio specialize in heavy sluggish stoner and sludge metal (the ‘mammut’ or mammoth piece) with psychedelic tendencies and bizarre sounds (‘ufo’ stylee). They do have possibly the best artwork and videoshow to accompany them, since two of the member are the masterminds behind the Malleus Rock Art Lab (www.malleusdelic.com) Together that should guarantee a intense, very memorable spacetrip, after which there’s still time remaining to finish of the Roadburn saturday with some cruel sounds from Swans or Gates of Slumber.

Ufomammut – Stigma @ S-Osis, Turku 2010

Audio of previous Roadburn performances:

Ufomammut @ Roadburn 2009

Ufomammut @ Roadburn 2006

Aluk Todolo
A recommendation of Sunn O)))’s Stephen O’Malley which seized me by the throat from the very first minute. I understood it to be satanic noiserock from the gutters of Paris (they share a rehearsal space with O’Malley) but there’s something way more sinister and utterly captivating going on here. But what? The band specializes in instrumental occult rock and consists of members of black metalbands Diamatregon and Vediog Svaor.

Listen to some full albums of the artists playing at Roadburn 2011 here:

New Incubate sessions of (from top to bottom) Horse Feathers, Damien Jurado, Citay, Night Terrors, The Drip Dry Man and the Dirty Hellhounds, Circle Bros, The Feeling Of Love, Plants and Animals and Leif Vollebekk.

So you enjoyed the Vanderbuyst show at Incubate 2010? Yeah, they trashed the place didn’t they!? 3VOOR12/Tilburg awarded the Dutch heavymetal guys with an 8,5!

Vanderbuyst just released their debut album. You can stream it now via the 3VOOR12 Luisterpaal. Must hear!

(photo via 3VOOR12/Tilburg’s Hans Dehing)

Freshvids, the partners of 3voor12 in the 3voor12 @ Incubate sessions, interviewd Jak from Antenne, also known as DMDN, about Generation Bass and piracy. Check it ou (only in Dutch) and stay tuned for more 3voor12 sessions coming up!

News Flash

• 3VOOR12 wrote an article about Incubate
• Rape Blossoms has beed added tot program. They will be replacing Nikoo (due to double pneumonia of the guitarist) on the 18th.
• We heard something about a festival called Intrubate (?) starting today…
• De Volkskrant wrote about Incubate today:

Tweets about Incubate:

Today we have more for you in store! For more information on today’s program, check here.

If you’re tweeting about Incubate, or sending photos (from your cellphone) of Incubate 2010 stuff, you can tag them with this special Incubate hashtag: #incu10

If you do so, your tweets and Mobypicture photos will end up in our official backchannel, which you can visit via http://incu10.incubate.org. Keep your friends informed about the festival, even if they’re not able to visit it. They’ll love it!

For more pictures, check our Flickr.

You can listen to full length albums from Incubate artists at the 3VOOR12 Incubate Luisterpaal. More albums will follow soon. You can also still check out our Spotify playlist.

There’s an interview with Jan van den Broek from ‘t Schop on 3VOOR12/Tilburg. You can read it here.

Last week, we already told you that some brand new Eklin tracks were available for listen on their MySpace. Now, there’s an interview with them on 3VOOR12 (in Dutch only, hower you can use Google Translate of course). In September they play at Incubate.

Damien Jurado’s new album Saint Bartlett can be heard here. 19 September he plays at Incubate.

Here’s their letter and their invoice. For more tweets, try Buma and Incubate, for the article on 3VOOR12, click here.

On may 8th Incubate hosted a stage on the Europe Mania festival in Pécs, Hungary. Journalist Bas van Duren from 3voor12/Tilburg went with us and wrote a two part report on our Hungarian adventure. Read part 2 of his report right here. If you happened to have missed part 1, read up on it here.

For the Dutchies an article about Nikoo, one of the bands that is playing at Incubate 2010.

A 3VOOR12 session with The Field!

Thanks 3voor12!

Visit the SPECIAL Incubate 3voor12 site.

3voor12/Tilburg added a small but insughtful interview to their site. They asked Frank Kimenai (on the right, next to Yvonne and Lemmy) how a festival works, and which bands he is proud of bringing to Tilburg.

“Er zijn enkel wat kleine problemen geweest: overdreven politiek correcte punkbands die niet met Der Blutharsch op hetzelfde festival willen staan en het vinden van een geschikte groep voor de woensdagavond. Op die dag leek wel een vloek te rusten. Gelukkig hebben we Anaal Nathrakh nu bereid gevonden dat gat in te vullen. Dat is best bijzonder, want zo vaak treedt die band niet op.”

Read it here in Dutch.

Incubate 2009 artist Costes is featured on Dutch music-website 3VOOR12. In 2007, a Costes show was cancelled in the 013 venue in Tilburg due to it’s “obscene” performance, reported 3VOOR12. Now they’ve released a follow up article on it.

Read it here! (in Dutch)

3voor12 posted a live set of Incubate 2009 artist Joker online @ Sonar. Check it out:

Joker @ BBC Radio 1 for EBU @ Sonar Festival 2009, Barcelona.