Kingsland Festival Amsterdam 2016
Bigger than ever, that’s how Kingsland Festival in 2016 can be described best. With a total of 100.000 expected visitors at no less than 3 locations: Amsterdam, Den Bosch and Groningen, we knew it had to be something big. Considering the extensive line-ups with high-class acts like Martin Garrix and Swedish duo Axwell /\ Ingrosso it’s not hard to imagine how excited we were. Read about our experience here!
On the 27th April it was finally time to head to Amsterdam. They had been predicting the weather was going to be awful, so some people had sold their ticket. The opposite was true and besides some wind and a just a couple of minutes of rain it was good festival-weather.
Already upon arrival it struck us how beautiful it looked to see everybody wearing orange in combination with the pretty decent stage-designs. Don Diablo was warming up the Mainstage which looked like a castle and with the sun out, it was just the perfect music to get the day started.
To our surprise, when we walked towards the Kings stage, where there was a Hardstyle program, we noticed that Noisecontrollers played together some tracks with Bass Modulators. Basically it was a short unannounced bit of NCBM. Noisecontrollers played a set which was filled with quite a lot of oldschool tunes such as the Qlimax anthem of 2007 ‘The Power Of The Mind’ and ‘Yellow Minute’. ‘Down Down’ actually led to a sit-down organized by MC Tha Watcher at 14:00. That says enough about the atmosphere at this stage.
The Heldeep Area was such a popular area that the organization had to make sure not too many people would enter. When we passed by the Tik Tak area, we clearly noticed that the crowd was loving the beats of The Flexican & MC Sef.
Both Blasterjaxx and W&W managed to keep a high-energy level during their sets at the Mainstage. They combined big summer-tunes of their own with upcoming releases of their labels. W&W’s remix of The Chainsmokers ‘Don’t Let Me Down’, which they had premiered at Ultra Music Festival Miami, increased the atmosphere even further.
Sunnery James & Ryan Marciano don’t need an introduction. The duo delivered a very characteristic tribal/house set. ‘Sound Of The Underground’ and ‘Lethal Industry’ remain crowd-pleasers which proves how amazing those productions are.
One of the highlights of the day was that Sem Vox came on stage for the countdown to say cheers with everybody. At that moment all visitors in Amsterdam, Groningen and Den Bosch became a part of the new Guiness World Record which previously was held by a baseball team in the USA.
Up next was one of the artists we had most looked forward to: Martin Garrix! The youngster absolutely smashed it, playing hit after hit after hit mixing it smoothly. A cool moment was when he played a new tune and when he brought one of his best friends Justin Mylo on stage. Justin Mylo, by the way, is definitely one to watch for the future!
The closing by Axwell /\ Ingrosso was intense! It brought back Swedish House Maffia memories but also created new ones because of the unreleased Ingrosso tunes the guys performed on stage. The duo is hardly ever in the Netherlands and the crowd realized how special this was too.
Conclusion
In short we had an amazing sunny Kingsday! We would like to thank E&A Events and 4PM for the opportunity to be a part of it. A very big plus of the event was the big variety of genres represented. We expected it to be a bit too busy but it was quite okay because the crowd was divided over the 4 areas. If you want a cool Kingsday this is definitely the place to be!
Reporter: Alexander Bouten
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