With its detailed focus on stage designs, the inventive combination of music and art, and the distinctive Asiat site as a playground, Horst Arts & Music Festival truly became a leader within the contemporary festival landscape. What originated in 2014 at the intimate Castle of Holsbeek, has grown into a yearly 3-day immersive festival in a dystopian-looking terrain full of old factory halls and decayed military buildings. After the great success of the 2021 edition in the midst of a short pandemic break, it seemed like the hidden gem from Belgium finally got the attention it deserved - gaining widespread recognition across the European scene.
During the year 2022, the deep characteristics of Horst Arts & Music’s experimental attitude are clearly rooted within the curatorial team, as a new listening space called Turning Circles was added to the program. Although the Japanese listening bar culture has been gaining popularity over the past few years, a dedicated listening space at a festival or club hasn’t been that common in the past decade. However, in the ‘90s, the ‘chill-out room’ or ‘break-out-zone’ was a true world beyond the main areas where one could wander off from the hectic beats and discover ambient and downtempo electronic music.
We moved over to Belgium to document this development towards a new listening experience. What drove Horst to give birth to such a space? How would the art installations by the London-based JAM studio reinforce the sense of calmness within the room? And, would people actually be ready to relive an era wherein electronic music didn’t have to be dance music as the next ‘Summer of Love’ was about to take place? The Horst team and JAM Studio shared their perspectives as they shaped the Turning Circles space for the first time. After the festival, we caught up with visual artist, DJ, and producer Joeri Woudstra - aka Torus - to reflect on his the unexpected turn the crowd took during his set.
As you walk into Turning Circles, you are hypnotized by the loops and cycles within the ambient sets which are also reflected in rotating art pieces hanging above the audience, moving in an orbital motion. While stages like Moon Ra or Troppo Fisio transcend you in an extraverted state of mind, the Turning Circles space invites you to turn inwards. Situated at the far end of the terrain, the sterile-looking warehouse filled with three square meter cushions brought a blend of people and moods - at peace, tense, or even gloomy. Although the room wasn’t packed with people most of the time, perhaps due to its almost intimidating size, it was filled up with energy constantly.
“I was almost afraid there would arise some kind of ambient moshpit”
Horst is adventurous, no doubt about it, and this is something that goes beyond stage design and art. The spaces and buildings between the stages are the home of diverse artworks that interact with the history of Asiat and the musical dimension of the festival, while also criticizing Belgium's colonial past. There is room to provoke dialogue on cultural or political matters - also translated clearly through the program at the Turning Circles stage with live performances by artists like Blackhaine or Space Afrika. Besides live sets, the audiophiles amongst us were served with avant-garde DJ sets by Kato De Vidts, upsammy, or Torus. The area lived up to the vision that pioneering listening bars in Japan like Bridge or SHeLTeR have: provide enriching listening experiences and connect people through musical education. If only the room was a bit smaller and situated in the middle of the terrain instead of on the outskirts, the listening space could truly become a main pillar of the festival - offering an oasis of peace for those passing by.
Where the boundaries of genres are blurred, extraordinary moments come to life. As we walked into the room on the second day of the festival, Torus was guiding the crowd through his trademark ambient and hyperpop sound. Gradually building up the tension, the room fully filled up with people for the first time. Somehow, a fire was sparked as Bomfunk’s Freestyler sample from 1999 floated through the soundsystem and one girl decided she couldn’t hold it anymore and had to dance. As she stood up, the room collectively stormed towards the booth to join her at the moment. ‘I was almost afraid there would arise some kind of ambient moshpit’, Torus reflects afterward.
Was this our connotation with the old days? Did we just relive the moment where a whole generation was transformed not only musically but also culturally and chemically like back in the ‘90s - which resulted in the so-called chill-out rooms? These retrospective conclusions on club culture and society can only be made in the future - but it sure felt like a transformative moment.
Where the boundaries of genres are blurred, extraordinary moments come to life. As we walked into the room on the second day of the festival, Torus was guiding the crowd through his trademark ambient and hyperpop sound. Gradually building up the tension, the room fully filled up with people for the first time. Somehow, a fire was sparked as Bomfunk’s Freestyler sample from 1999 floated through the soundsystem and one girl decided she couldn’t hold it anymore and had to dance. As she stood up, the room collectively stormed towards the booth to join her at the moment. ‘I was almost afraid there would arise some kind of ambient moshpit’, Torus reflects afterward.
Was this our connotation with the old days? Did we just relive the moment where a whole generation was transformed not only musically but also culturally and chemically like back in the ‘90s - which resulted in the so-called chill-out rooms? These retrospective conclusions on club culture and society can only be made in the future - but it sure felt like a transformative moment.
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It is the multi-faceted musical output that makes a listening space so exciting. ‘Sets could have ambient as a starting point and venture into pretty much any genre artists felt at that moment’, programmer Simon Nowak tells us after the festival. ‘With the expansion of Horst we felt like the experimental side of Horst got slowly pushed out of the lineup due to the need to create intense dancefloors. We wanted to go further than energetic electronic dance music, and even further than only ambient music. We felt that there was a need for an additional stage where you could escape the high-intensity, flashing lights and thumping kicks of the other stages.’
With JAM creating a real dialogue between Horst’s mantra of arts and music at the Turning Circles stage, the Horst team once again showed their unique skill to blend multidisciplinary worlds and create new experiences. But this time, they rather re-invented an old experience. The chill-out room once was a pinnacle of the clubbing scene as electronic dance music began to migrate to clubs following the outdoor rave scene of the acid house era in the early ‘90s. The current trend of listening bars in cities is a result of our evolution towards a more sophisticated approach to music. Horst managed to combine the best of both worlds within the Turning Circles stage.
Although promoters are pushed away from a proper zone-out area due to multiple possible factors, it is the responsibility of leading organizations like Horst to carry this torch along - as electronic music has much more to offer than just dance music. With the preparations for their 2023 in full motion, we are wondering what the next chapter of Horst Arts & Music Festival will look like. Pre-register here and we will see you at the following edition.
