Wonderful festival, located on a wooded hill at the fringes of a small town near the Czech border of Germany. The line up was a nice mix of unsigned and established bands, playing on 4 stages, two typical big open air stages and two smaller ones. The musical spectrum included anything between sheer acoustic medieval whatever to symphonic metal. The crowd were a couple thousand friendly folks from all over Germany and some from the neighbouring countries.
Their were lots of little lovely details. Lots of market booths with al kind of jewelry, magic stones, bows and arrows, furs .. whatever might please the esoteric or archaic mind. Then food stands with stuff you don't get at every corner and of good quality. Also there were archaic camps where people would reenact what they thought was typical camp life in ancient times. Well I was just there for the music and I don't care a lot for the middle ages with their narrow minded view of things, therefore I didn't mind drinking my coffee from a plastic cup. Yeah ! But otherwise the archaic atmosphere was there, with most people choosing their garments with care, drinks (even coca cola) being served out of earthenware and strange sounds and sights were everywhere.
Musically the first day, which was Friday, was relatively bland for me. Rapalje with their traditional folk were okay and Haggard delivered a splendid show, but I can't stand them anyway. But their sound was good and their singer was good and the violin player had wonderful long hair and all was a lot better than when I saw them a couple years ago.
Saturday I went to the unsigned band's rock contest and saw three okay bands in friendly sunshine on a small stage located lovely near a grove. After that it was Amber with their cheesy catchy little songs and the unfathomable smile of their violin player. John Kelly and Maite Itoiz brought quite a number of people and dancers and whatever on the big stage and delivered a bombastic pop-folk rock show. Beautiful melodies, cheesy as hell and I enjoyed this half-dozing on the meadow in the sunshine. Then Reincarnatus - six hot ladies from the land of water and cheese. Three of them played drums, bass and e-guitar, one played a violin and the remaining two worked their way through an assortment of bagpipes, flutes and other equipment and did the vocals as well. The leader did a great job entertaining the crowd in German with little stories around the songs. Not a spit and polish pop show for sheep, rather an honest crossover folk rock show with a very sexy touch. And yes, the oldest and most hairless bucks made the dumbest comments and the bandleader didn't shy away from any shouting match.
After that the fun was over. Valravn blew everybody miles away with their incredible electro folk. Catchy, touching, powerful and the female singer is not from this world. Energetic and charming she enchanted anything, be it ant, man or tree. After that the next bizarre event... Dazkarieh from Portugal had lost their instruments and came too late. Hurriedly they connected some borrowed equipment to the amplifiers and played their atmospheric folk music a couple precious minutes on time borrowed from the next band. Doubt and anger vanished from their faces and made place for sheer delight for a few songs full of energy, before they were abruptly cut off so the next band could set up. This totally brought me out of balance and I had no ear for Qntal with their electro music, althought the singing was splendid. Too much had the previous bands touched me with their authentic music. Finally the headliner Omnia gave us a tremendous show and finished an incredible day with their symphonic folk act, that like last year was augmented by juggler Kelvin Kalvus and his crystal balls.
Sunday saw Cecil Corbel doing an atmospheric gig with her voice and harp, Vedan Kolod from somewhere in Siberia enchanted everybody with their wailing folk tunes. The man sung a couple notes so deep that everybody asked, where does he get that from. The girls had good voices and all rotated through a selection of simple string instruments and pipes and flutes and stuff. Big applause for them and after a long time the smiles rose on their faces. My other two highlights were Trobar del Morte with beautiful female vocals and ancient spanish folk tunes and finally Faun, who did their usual incredible hypnotic symphonic folk act and spellbound one or two thousand people to a meadow during 9 degrees C on a Sunday evening. Even the rain band of the passing cold front weakened considerably while passing the festival area. I can prove that.