Dutch/Belgian week on WoNoBloG: De Staat at Werfpop

De Staat at Wefpop. Foto Wo.

You can listen to 'Sweatshop' here.

The whole day it had been raining cats and dogs, but come 18.00 hours it was dry and I got on my bike to ride to the Leidsche Hout, the main park of Leiden for Werfpop 2012.

Finally I got a mud soaked festival (and park's lawn that's ruined for about a year I guess). De Staat came up with front man Torre Florim leaning on a walking stick, an accident with an ankle. As he said, lucky for us he doesn't play guitar with his ankle. From the moment he started on his own, before the rest of the band came on, it was quite clear we were going to be rocked. And rock we got. Nearing the end of show in front of the stage wild scenes inside the park were going on. Always nice to see from a safeish distance.

Foto Wo.

Those familiar with the music of De Staat know the atypical music the band makes. To be honest, I don't really know any other bands making music this radical and still swing like the devil's lair. (The Gang of Four, but they're not halfway as good and Franz Ferdinand is more melodious, less radical.) It's not the sort of music that I can listen to every day, but when I do I listen loud. Like today. Several of my favourite songs came by and they were not just mine. The ground was totally filled up in front of the main stage and quite rightly so. De Staat proved to be a mean rocking machine. 'Wait for evolution', 'Sweatshop', 'The fantastic journey ...', 'Old McDonald ...' and ending it all with 'Ah I see'. Finally it was revealed why a car steer was on the stage with all the percussion and keyboards of Rocco Hueting. In the distance during the show a car alarm was set off and the car horn as an instrument was a great accompaniment. Before that we were treated to a new song, that incorporated the vuvuzela as a sort of boom-shanga-lang chant. A fun song as it led to singing along at Werfpop as a new song. A new single?

Foto Wo.

Torre Florim knows how to get a show going by now and a show it became, on stage as well as on off stage. Things got really wild, basically by allowing near silences before a song erupts again. It never happened me going to a De Staat show before, so I even would have gone had it still rained. I was lucky though. No rain, even some sunshine, before things got darker again. Time to go home.

Great logo on the Bass drum though. Styled like the ´Machinery´ album's artwork. You may want the cd just for that.

You can read about the rest of the festival next week.

Wo.


You can order 'Machinery' here


or here