Dour has everything you could possibly want from a festival. Pretty much every musical style is catered for Rock, Drum & Bass, Reggae, Pop, Indie, Hip-Hop, Metal, Dubstep and least importantly Belgian “music.” Set in the aptly named town of Dour, the festival grounds are much more pleasing to the eye than the surrounding areas. On a positive note the omnipresent stench of piss and vinegar that previously plagued the festival seems to have been cured. And it’s good to see that the friendly atmosphere has been retained.

The main difference I find with European festivals compared to English is the idiot ratio is severely reduced. I much lower percentage of people here have paid the entrance fee just to sit in a field loudly shouting “BOLLOCKS” ad nauseum ,which can only be a good thing. The second great thing about European festivals, Dour especially is the space you get. Unlike UK festivals where there always seems to be a drunk, hairy, sweaty colossus of a man continuously trying to enter you from behind every time you go into a crowd, at Dour you are able to walk straight up to front without any harrowing sexual assaults whatsoever.

The once revolutionary Mathcore pioneers The Dillinger Escape Plan have been on a steady decline since losing original vocalist Dimitri Minakakis . The frenetic energy and virtuoso technical abilities are both still present but their recent material is no better than the hordes of wannabe acts that arrived after their seminal Calculating Infinity album. Watching Greg Puciato attempt to copy Mike Patton’s vocals is a winch inducing final nail in the coffin.

I expected great things from Boston Post- Metal outfit Isis and they didn’t disappoint. With a huge PA and great live sound the massive slabs of dissonant distortion become truly hypnotic. There has been an evolution in the sound of the band over the last couple of albums with an emergence of a more melodic post- rock sound. The newer songs work astoundingly well live and though they played nothing from their debut they were still the highlight of the weekend.

A totally unexpected pleasure came in the form of American dark gypsy folk rock band O’Death. They possessed the power to unleash in me the need to dance like a complete twat, an act that I keep bottled up inside for fear of inadvertently causing the End of Days. O’Deathare a truly amazing live act that makes you feel as if you are taking part in a whisky induced dancefest that could turn into a bad TV show bar brawl at any second.

Too cool for school duo Crystal Castles were surprisingly good, coming off far more intense and urgent live than on record. They performed in pitch black with only a handheld strobe as lighting for the whole tent which led to continuous stream of hipsters tripping over each other on there way to the hovering cloud of smugness hovering over the front of the stage.
 

Another highlight was the beautifully named Fuck Buttons whoperform hypnotic tribal influenced electro noise. Despite being paid up members of the floppy hair brigade, the music that they create is brilliant. Managing to be intense while retaining melody, distorted vocals mix with distant keys and pulsing synths which build into a think and glorious sound.
 

The startlingly overrated Animal Collective sound as if they have discovered for the first time that you can add delay and reverb effects to vocals. They proceed to abuse these effects like a Catholic priest for what seems like days, but in reality was only 90 minutes.
 

The final headliners on the main stage were Aphex Twin & Hecker who used a four speaker surround sound set up to great effect. The set started slowly with material similar to Aphex’s less successful AFX output. The quality and intensity increased throughout the course of the set, which finished with wailing blasts of noise which encircled the crowd. Not back to his heyday but some of his best work for a long time.
 

Dour is a great festival and at 85 Euros for 4 days it’s a bargain. The line up is one of the most varied in Europe and the atmosphere is second to none. You can keep the wheatgrass slugging yippies of Glastonbury and generic hordes of Reading who believe that the Kings of Leon are the best thing since the botched lobotomy because I’m going to Dour again next year.