When up to 48.000 party people travel to the Olga Park in Oberhausen, which is covered in the wildest colors and when the kicks are shattering through the place, it can only mean the “Ruhr in Love” is back again! On July 2nd the fourteenth edition took place with nearly 400 artists and more than 40 stages – the family festival of the electronic music scene.
It’s all about love – Don’t fight genres!
If you’re not familiar with the tradition of Ruhr in Love, organized by I-Motion and the concept, here’s a short explanation:
Smaller event organizers have the chance to represent themselves. You could have found stages from organizers from all over Germany and also some from abroad. All stages had different designs and offered different electronic dance music. Regarding that, the stages were not that big or supported with the best equipment, the craziest sound system or the famous artists in the scene. It’s really about the music and the love for the harder styles or even the softer styles of electronic dance music. I really love the aspect that you can see a lot of older people, like the really old 90s’ rave generation and older!
Massive Dynamic, a fresh event organizer from Hamburg, who has already hosted the Radical Redemption World Tour in Hamburg and organized their raw event ‘Raw District’, asked us as Hardstyle Mag, if we would join them to show Ruhr in Love what hardstyle is all about. We couldn’t really resist to say no! We gathered some highly anticipated artists, showed I-Motion our stage concept and finally got a place on the huge organizer line up.
We really wanted to show the best sides of hardstyle, a 360-degree experience of hardstyle – our stage offered early hardstyle, the golden classics, euphoric hardstyle, freestyle, hardcore and of course raw hardstyle!
The same type of passion and dedication lead to a successful application for a dedicated Hardstyle floor – named “Infinity” including an even more sophisticated lineup:
DJ Thera
Thyron
Dozer
Voidax
Final Impact
The Kreator
Demolite
Criminal Pandaz
Noizefreak
Xperior
MC I See
To start things off, we welcomed our first artists on stage: Final Impact, followed by Criminal Pandaz – both played an opening set how we like it. The euphoric tunes, no matter if slightly older ones or the newest floor filler, mixed with some fresh freestyle and even hardcore beats, the floor got packed more and more. It was just around 2pm, two hours after the doors opened, the first die hards ran towards our stage and more and more the floor got filled. Maybe it was because the sound was noticeable across the whole festival ground – at least nearly!
Our first headliner Dozer, the one, the legendary and the only one. Damn it, to shake his hands feels like you’re shaking over 20 years of hard dance music. I will never wash my right hand again! It was amazing to have him on our line up and while enjoying his set, as he played only the best early hardstyle and classic tracks, the floor was already packed. The vibe was really good and thankfully we had some solid ground and not a muddy greenfield. By playing Church of the Darkside, followed by some classic, euphoric The Pitcher tracks, heading over to some late 2010 tracks he finished his beautiful set in style.
Next up was DJ Thera and you all know what this means! Pure hardstyle, hardstyle at its best! Thera never fails to amaze, his sets are diverse, melodic, rough and it’s always nice to see him enjoying his set the most. Staarfleet or Going Under from his latest album were dropped, as well as Post Apocalypse with Ophidian as one of the last tracks. In between you also heard Smokemachine and some new Jason Payne tracks such as Venom!
[fbvideo link=”https://www.facebook.com/hardstylemagazin/videos/vb.188618308003048/495675740630635/?type=2&theater” width=”800″ height=”500″ onlyvideo=”1″]
The music got harder, as the sunset was visible behind the trees, Thyron showed the crowd what raw hardstyle is all about! As he mashed up his way through an uncountable amount of tracks, he reached his peak with Seven, pitched to hardcore, nearly all Malice tracks, his own tracks like Gangster or Into the Abyss. Seriously his mixing skills almost have the level of Crypsis or Jason Payne. If you have the chance to visit a set of this very talented producer and DJ, don’t miss it – you won’t regret it!
[fbvideo link=”https://www.facebook.com/hardstylemagazin/videos/vb.188618308003048/499962013535341/?type=2&theater” width=”800″ height=”500″ onlyvideo=”1″]
The last artists Noizefreak and Voidax finished off the day perfectly, as they went harder and harder, but still with the specific melodic touch. I loved how Voidax enjoyed his set to the max and how the crowd screamed for more! What an awesome vibe.
We would like to thank all artists who participated, who came and showed Ruhr in Love what hardstyle is all about, Massive Dynamic, all people who helped to turn Ruhr in Love to an awesome experience and we would like to thank all, who came by to party hard! As Thera said, it’s not always about the biggest stages, the best sound system, the craziest light shows – sometimes it’s all about the music!