Mystery Land - see how far the rabbit hole goes....

Mystery Land 2014

Saturday 23rd August 2014
near Schiphol Airport, Amsterdam, Haarlemmermeer, The Netherlands MAP
72.50 euros

Daily capacity: 60,000

What’s that bloke doing with that pineapple? Is that an accordionist strapped half-way up the tree on a chair? These may be fragments of dreams. Or are they in fact reconstructed memories, glimpses of Mystery Land 2014, a special edition celebrating the 21st birthday of the Netherlands’ longest-running dance music festival.

This dance music wonderland is located about 20 kilometres outside of Amsterdam, at a purpose-built park near Hoofddorp. The place is to home to monster-size stages, nestling next to green fields, forest clearings and enchanted babbling brooks. Beastly electronic music DJs and artists come out to play with festival-goers.

The music line-up is immense. Grimy beats from Boys Noize at mid-afternoon. Next over to the Starclub X TikTak stage and the crazy frantic energy of duo Glowinthedark. Lots of glitterballs provide bling-bling factor and there’s a kool inside-outside vibe going on with the crowd spilling out into the small open arena.

Elsewhere - an inflatable church, full of ravers. Or smoke and glitter spewing out from a gaudy purple stage engulfing several glammed-up disco divas lining the podiums. The ethos is definitely anything goes.

Dutch DJ producer Hardwell lights up the main stage in the evening. Lots of hard synth walls of sound, crescendo-ing. The aural identity of the festival is characterised by tight beats, heavy basslines and big brash hoover-sounds. Every dance music genre is represented: trance, minimalist techno, drum’n’bass, commercial house.

Make your way through the trees and explore…you’ll be surprised at what you discover. We eventually climb to the top of grass pyramid and find a secret rainbow rooftop dance floor which that lets us survey the entire festival. Look, there’s the Pineapple Paradise area where all the fruit lives!

The unpredictable Dutch weather holds out and emergency ponchos are left in situ. We watch the super-hero fancy dress guy in blue head-to-toe lycra pump his head in time to the kick-drum. Then decide to go and find some shade under a tree. ‘Be gentle to your ears’, a sign proclaims. Mystery Land isn’t for the faint-hearted.

Getting there is quite straightforward from Amsterdam’s Centraal Station with a shuttle bus ferrying partygoers from the train to the festival site. Logistics onsite are simple with the usual array of facilities including lockers and charging points. The sole quirkiness that needs to be outlined is the obligatory token system which supplants cash at bars and eateries, or anything else for that matter. Switch up your notes or plastic at the banks of token machines before purchasing a Heineken.