Every year in the dead of winter, the Dutch city of Groningen is home to Eurosonic, Europe’s biggest music showcase. Last week, the city became a giant music festival, with concerts, seminars, pop-up venues, parties and after-parties everywhere. Groningen is also our hometown, so what better way to get involved than by hosting our very own stage? So we set up a Music and Tech Hideout, along with our good friends from the Welcome To The Village Festival, I.Turn.IT (in Dutch) and Festival Hack Day, who organised a data-driven Hackathon revolving around sensor technology, data analysis and visualisation – music meeting tech, which is of course right up Chordify’s street! However, when you’re hosting your own stage, aside from the kick-ass bands which we certainly had in abundance, you need that little extra something to make you stand out from the hundreds of different venues popping up during the three days of Eurosonic. I can assure you ladies and gentlemen, that we rose to the challenge, with the following exceedingly cool events…
(Yakumo – by Tineke Klamer)
Live Sessions On Thursday and Friday afternoons, InDeKringloop (IDK) made intimate live recordings of Broken Brass Ensemble, Town of Saints, Paceshifters, Amber Arcade, Maask and Vuurwerk. We’ll be sure to share them with you when they’re all polished up nicely but in the meantime, lo and behold, the mighty aftermovie! And for all you German fans out there, WDR Rockpalast dropped by for an interview (be sure to check it out here) with The Deaf, who also shot a 360 degrees video in our hideout.
(Town Of Saints and Amber Arcades – by Arjan Kremer)
Gado Gado Party Gado what now? Gado gado! It’s amazingly tasty Indonesian food. On Friday evening, we went all out at our exclusive, invite only party, with a standing buffet, great bands and DJs, and spectacular refreshments of the barley kind – which is an overly fancy way of saying there was free beer. We had some great performances by Klangstof and Yakumo, not to mention our very own Chordify team member Jasper from J’lectroniq. 
A Eurosonic highlight: the massive circle pit Ever seen a circle pit during a rock concert? For those of you who haven’t, it’s basically people jumping around in a big circle. Now picture more than half of the audience doing that, and the crowd becoming a giant vortex. That’s exactly what happened during De Staat’s concert at the ‘Eurosonic Air’ venue, with band front man Torre Florim right in the center of it, like the eye of a massive human storm. A circle pit formed the basis of De Staat’s latest music video Witch Doctor, but it’s spectacular to be a part of it when it’s happening all around you: Sadly, it’s all back to normal this week at the Chordify office. Sigh. But we have many music festivals to look forward to and the next big thing is our presence at NAMM Show in Anaheim, CA. We’ll keep you posted!
