The biggest European showcase event of the year is Eurosonic. It’s not only the first festival of the season, but also marks the beginning of Chordify. Say what?! Yup, we officially launched during Eurosonic 2013. Now, eight years later, we look back on some awesome parties, and we look forward to this year’s edition marked by the “new normal” approach.
The new normal for festivals is a different ballgame, meaning everything is online. Eurosonic is no exception, and their cooperation with one of the biggest radio stations of the Netherlands — 3FM — comes with a lot of benefits for the audience at home. Interested in what you can do during the festival? Read ahead, and we’ll tell you all about it.
Eurosonic 2021
Drinking beer, talking to random strangers while checking out the pop stars of the future rocking on stage is what Eurosonic is all about. Well, it used to be pre COVID-19 that is. This year is different. In a way it has its benefits because you can sit at home, sip your tea, wine, or locally brewed beer, and just enjoy good music on your laptop or bigger screen. This goes for all the programs of ESNS 2021, and it saves you lots of time and energy.
For starters, you always have the front row seats, and you don’t have to fight your way in a venue. Of course you can see all the acts you love without hurrying from one place to the other leaving mid show. These are awesome benefits if you ask us. Eurosonic is one of the highlights of our year, but it also is one of the most stressful festivals since the schedule is always pretty tight, and we end up in a hurry most of the time. This year is going to be maximal chilling on your couch since you can check everything on the Eurosonic 2021 website.
Music Moves Europe Talent Awards
One thing that’s worth checking out is definitely the Music Mover Europe Talent Awards. Not only because former Spice Girl Melanie C is this year’s host, but also because you’ll see the crème de la crème of the European talents perform. This is a great opportunity to dive into the almost infinite pool of music that Eurosonic 2021 offers. So if you’re overwhelmed by the awesome line up, and don’t know where to start, just check out the selection of the MMETA.
A few gems
We do have a few Eurosonic 2021 gems to share with you, but keep in mind that everyone has a specific taste. What we like isn’t necessarily something that will give you goosebumps, or maybe it is. Normally we do our own showcase during Eurosonic by producing the IDK x Chordify sessions. This year we won’t do that, but if you’re curious we’ll dive into some cool recordings from the previous years later.
For now let’s stick to some cool acts that we found pretty interesting while digging through the line up. First of all we were struck by the number of hip hop acts. It’s cool to see how the genre is evolving and how new blood is using the tools of former generations to make it more awesome.
For instance the rapper Alyona Alyona from Ukraine. This woman means business with tracks like “Ribki” — meaning fishes, which is women in Ukrainian slang — is referring to women like her who are not accepted by the beauty standards of society. Alyona Alyona used to be a kindergarten teacher, now she’s a badass rapper, and really good at it too if you ask us.
Another gem that caught our attention is the Dutch Turkish band Altin Gün. With their music the band brings a nice melange of psychedelic folk rock. Listen for yourself and be amazed how mesmerizing the tracks are, and how they pull you into an ever flowing universe of color in sound.
Our third tip is NAVA from Italy. Nava Golchini is the front woman of this act that blends Italian electronic music with Persian folklore. Listening to NAVA’s tracks will give you energy, but once you’ve seen their videos, oh man you’re going down the rabbit hole.
Ah the memories
“The memory remains… yeah!” Can you hear James Hetfield singing this line from the Metallica classic? He does hit the nail on the head with this wisdom, ‘cause in the end memories are all you got. Beside the photos, videos, and articles that we produced during the previous editions of Eurosonic when “normal” wasn’t old or new. With a little tear in our eye we dug through our archives, and selected a few memories of better times.
Since every Eurosonic means that it’s our birthday we always used to organise our signature GadoGado Party in our very special Music &Tech Hideout. During the whole festival we invited acts to play, and artists to expose their work in our hideout. From Zucco 103 to FENN, and Gurr. You could just walk in, have a coffee, a nice beer, and talk to like minded people, while checking out great music. Those were the days.
IDK sessions
We also hosted the IDK x Chordify container sessions during Eurosonic in past years, and recorded some great artists like Louise Lémon, Whispering Sons, Bad Nerves and The Snuts. You can check out all the sessions on the IDK YouTube channel. Here are a few that still get our adrenaline pumping.
The guys from Bad Nerves almost trashed the container during their session. There was so much energy that our crew’s cameras almost exploded. Luckily for us, they didn’t and the result was the video below. After the session we did an interview with Bad Nerves where they told us all about making music, and gave us some tips on improving our guitar skills.
Everyone went quiet when Black Sea Dahu from Switzerland started playing at the end of the day. Their song “Rhizome” is like a warm blanket on a cold night, and since it’s pretty cold during Eurosonic this was the perfect wrap up of a hard day’s work. While the band was clearing up their gear front woman Janine Cathrein had a couple of minutes to talk to us about life on the road.
As we mentioned already it’s cold during Eurosonic, and when a band like Whispering Sons from Belgium are recording their magic at our container it’s full inside and out. Their dark tracks pull your mind away from the cold, wet wind, and make you take a dive into the dark waters of your subconscious. The track “Stalemate” is a perfect example of this. If you’re interested in how the act creates their pulsing tracks, just check out our interview with guitarist Kobe of Whispering Sons.
There are so many good memories of previous Eurosonic editions that we can’t list them all in a thousand blog posts. We’ll wrap this up with a groovy extravagant session of Nova Twins from Eurosonic 2019. This trio brought some old school hip hop and hardcore tunes, and mixed those up with new crazy sounds. When you feel down just listen to Nova Twins to get some inner fire burning. Enjoy the new normal edition of Eurosonic 2021, and fingers crossed that next year we can return to being old normal. Happy jamming!
