Outlook Festival 2012 Review

Words by Scenewave Oz - Published on September 7, 2012

On the backdrop of the stunning Fort Punta Christo (the top end of Croatia) Outlook Festival has taken the cake for not only the most “loose” festival I’ve been to, but hands down the coolest.

My expectations were set at low as I didn’t 100% know the line-up, wasn’t sure what the layout would entail and how the drum and bass folk would embrace their crowds. This expectation was swiftly inverted and nek minnit I was doing a 180 amongst the gorgeous beaches, motes, forts, old ballrooms and boats along the Adriatic Sea.

To set the scene for our festival experience, we encountered some initial problems with event organisation with what seemed to be the blind leading the deaf… that just doesn’t work. After this confusion it all sailed smoothly and we grabbed a $1.50 500ml beer, pulled up a stump at the foreshore of the bay in the big red and set up camp.

We were the first off the rank to attend a boat party (Boat 1) which saw us escape the festivities on shore to the pristine blue waters at sea. We were lucky enough to have a group of Lithuanian Dj’s giving us their finest produced tracks which I thought was one of the highlights of the weekend. If you get a chance, grab a dj named Fingalick’s works. An impressive talent who is on the verge of releasing his debut EP on Sept 17!

Once the boat party wrapped up and we somehow disembarked, we ventured back into the festival to bust jumpers and make another move at whatever stage would accommodate our drunkard antics. The general dance maneuvers amongst our cohort to any of the genera’s (dub, hip-hop, drum ‘n’ bass and dubstep together) was like an epileptic having a fit at a strobe light show.

The acts overall were amazing live and brought great energy amongst the masses, with the crowds being very easy going to work through and dance along without any pushing and that bloody tom foolery. The rain came on the Saturday night, with it being the first in months for Croatia, however this didn’t seem deter the masses!

I think overall the festival was run smoothly, had an amazing vibe and the backdrop for the stages is something that can’t be replicated very easily, if not at all.

A few highlights I’ll take away are as follows:

• Getting full retard and dancing amongst the ruins of an old fort, a hollowed out mote, and the picturesque beach party whilst the sunset.
• The Boat 1 Party. Unreal.
• A girl at the main stage sprinting at her hearts content to be rudely horizontally six packed by some big unit on a mission to see his favourite jungle artist. Ment’al.
• Meeting some amazing people at our camp site from Italy (cooking us some amazing packet pasta!, partying with a best mate from home, meeting some fellow Aussies (a laugh none of us will forget) and our fellow campers from Austria who we overran. Techno and Jans the fuhrer.
• The general riff raff who we egged on in their drug induced state.

Thanks to Leeds for supplying the media passes, and Outlook organisers for the festival antics I’ll be recommending this one amongst the Aussie contingent of music lovers.

The motto was followed.. I didn’t die.