Dimensions
Festival guide
Situated in the breathtaking abandoned Fort Punta Christo on the coast of Croatia, Dimensions is spectacular on all fronts. The site originally played host to Outlook in 2010, a larger capacity dub/soundsystem-culture festival which is now in its eighth year and takes place the first weekend of September. Both attract thousands of music fans from across the world, but Dimensions is more focused on electronic dance music than its big sister, offering a high calibre of house and techno artists. Visit the festival website and browse our recommendations below.
TOP PICKS
Moodymann
Kenny Dixon Jr's performances at Dimensions have become legendary. Following 2012's Sunday night finale set in which he dropped Gregory Porter's magnificent '1960 What?', crowds have always flocked to his sets, some arriving hours early to secure a decent dancing spot. One quarter of Detroit's Three Chairs alongside Theo Parrish, Marcellus Pittman and Rick Wilhite, Moody is known for his eccentric persona, notably on his classic tune 'Freeki Motherf**ka'. Armed with a bag of Detroit’s finest deep house cuts, this year he’ll be raising the roof once again.
Motor City Drum Ensemble
Grooves, disco, house: Danilo Plessow has it all. The German producer effortlessly laid out the essential elements of deep house in his ‘Raw Cuts’ series on his own MCDE imprint. Yet - despite his impressive discography - it’s his DJ sets in particular which have afforded him the most praise. Plessow blends together a colourful mixture of genres, favouring old disco edits such as Mass Production’s ‘Welcome to our World of Merry Music’ and classics like Diana Ross’s ‘Ain’t No Mountain High Enough’. Catch him on Saturday's boat party, casting a feel-good spell across the water in a five-hour back-to-back set with Jeremy Underground.
Romare
Over the last few years, Peckham-based producer Archie Fairhurst has honed his own unique crop of African-inspired dance music. Heavily influenced by the Afro-American artist Romare Bearden, who used collage to reappropriate traditional representations of black identity, Fairhurst mimics this practice, reworking tropes from jazz, blues and duke. These sonic montages are in evidence on 2012's 'Meditations on Afrocentrism', as well as his recent debut, Projections. For those seeking party music with a tribal edge, make sure you catch Romare’s high-energy set.