The Festival is over and here is our Waves Music Festival 2015 - Vienna and Bratislava recap. It was nice to see some fresh music again. We found some new cool acts even tough we didn’t manage to watch as many as last year. A big surprise was definitely the super good quality of venues and acts we saw in Bratislava. It could be just the fresh impression of a new city but still I would say it was much better than Vienna. The crowds were better, the locations were better and the soundsystem (+ soundguys) were better. So I am not quite sure what is happening with the Waves Vienna cause in my opinion the overall quality on the Viennese side of the festival is constantly dropping over the years whereas Bratislava is constantly rising.
But again we are very picky and complaining about everything cause we have been in Vienna too long, haha.
Waves Vienna 2015
From the few acts we saw we can say that Oddisee is for sure our best act of the whole festival.
here is some video footage from us to prove it :)
https://youtu.be/Gyn73MahWLI?t=1m54s
We were super disappointed by the whole Warner music night, every band was way too polished and sounded like one guy with a musical idea + 5 studio musicians who didn’t really care who they are playing with. Coasts were boring, even tough I was expecting some indie perfection from them and Honne was somehow also not as good as I expected. We heard that Jesper Munk was good, but we missed him.
Last year was better with Y’akoto.
The haymarket “tent” was kind of strange, and when Darkstar were playing there it was even stranger to have this beautifully created electronic music with some french fries smell from the fryer in the back and just 5-10 other “fans” there.
I have no idea why an act like Austrian Apparel is playing at Alte Post (=main stage in Vienna) Prime Time slot, whereas Darkstar are playing at the small tent at 10. They seemed quite pissed and finished even 10 minutes earlier as they would have been supposed to. On the other hand, Lehnen
sounded quite good on the Red Bull Brandwagen Stage and played a quite powerful atmospheric concert. Their sound even fit to this wide open space they were placed with the Brandwagen.
Video of Lehnen Live:
The Mike Skinner co-directed Movie “Hip Hop in the holy land” was quite interesting but the screening was kind of a PR disaster for Noisey Austria. But on the other hand it was nice to have the Q & A session in cosy atmosphere with just 10 other people.
His DJ-Set was even better than I expected, oldschool UK Bass, Garage and House music mixed with some fresh trap stuff. I didn’t like the EDM shit he also occasionally dropped in, but fortunately it was just tiny bits and in general his DJ-set was great fun.
Waves Bratislava 2015
Finally this year we made it to the third edition of the WAVES Bratislava and still we were sad we only made it on the last night, because it was the bomb! Via bus we went from the WAVES Vienna’s festival centre at Alte Post to Bratislava, bus only takes an hour and leaves each hour in both directions. With the festival pass for both cities the ride is for free.In Bratislava we saw Jonathan again. Our favorite band from last year (read more here). Still amazing. Somebody should book them to Vienna. Fismoll was quite stunning especially playing in the old theatre -> MDPOH venue. And the big hall Stara Trznica was super impressive as a venue too. There we watched a bit of the rapper Supa, who was quite good and got the crowd going. At the polish Institute Bratislava we also caught a few minutes of Stroon, who makes some amazing electronica combined with his big xylophone. A big advantage is the proximity of all the venues, within 5 minutes you can reach them all and are almost along one street, which is super handy if you wanna see as much concerts as possible. We were surprised by the originality of the clubs/venues, which covered underground pubs, fancy exhibition spaces up to old office buildings going up to the 4th floor in an early 90ies elevator to reach a club is always a good indicator.
Here is our video footage from Bratislava:
and some pics:
So if you haven’t been to Bratislava we strongly advise you to check out all these amazing music venues there.
And here is our Video Playlist with all the footage we filmed from the Waves Central Eastern Europe Music Festival 2015 Vienna & Bratislava