Music Overshadowed by Death at Serbia’s EXIT

Novi Sad | 11 July 2009 |

Not even the rain stopped Korn, Photo by Sophie Cottrell

The tragic death of a 22-year-old British visitor, who fell to his death from the walls of the Petrovaradin fortress overnight has cast a shadow over proceedings at the 10th EXIT Festival in Novi Sad this morning. Most festival goers were oblivious to the tragedy and danced on into the small hours.

The youngster, Anthony Fisk, a Londoner, in circumstances as yet unclear, fell from the fortress, perched high on a promontory above the Danube, and died from his injuries in the ambulance on the way to hospital.

The previous night, the huge crowd of revellers had endured the mud caused by some persistent rain to dance the night away to some of the worlds biggest bands and DJs.

Bagpipes don't often set alight a heavy metal concert. But that's exactly what happened at the Main Stage last night, when Korn's front-man played an interlude to one of their biggest hits, drawing a standing ovation from the crowd.

Young people were jumping up and down with a seemingly unlimited amount of energy for the full 90 minutes of Korn's rock-solid show. Not for second was I tempted to make my way to the front half of the frenzied masses, whose zest and enthusiasm can only be compared to the kind of pandemonium The Prodigy caused here a couple of years ago.

Draconic performing at exit, photo by Sophie Cottrell

But, The Prodigy will be back on Sunday, so expect more of the same. Elswehere, Jamaican old boy Max Romeo produced another classic gig on the Fusion stage, whose size and popularity has grown with each Exit down the years.

It's now easily the third biggest draw at the festival, behind theMain Stage and the Dance Arena. Romeo was followed by a popular local band called Hladno Pivo (Cold Beer), who impressed with their mixture of old-fashioned rock garnished with a bit of pop.

Back in the Arena, the unrelenting rain, which turned the area into a mudbath, seemed to deter not a single electronic music fan from their favourite site at the Petrovaradin fortress.

Happy revellers slipped and slid into potholes created by the unforgiving,weather and the enchanting beats of Deep Dish's Dubfire, whose back-to-back set with Ritchie Hawtin was one of the best I've ever seen in the Dance Arena.

As they were thrown off balance into the mud, the unfortunate and and the exhausted drew loud cheers from a group stuck at the bottom of a crater-like hole in the upper tier of the compound.

Shifting the camp site from its old location to a disused army compound has created a lot of issues, a long and tiring walk to the fortress and the city centre being one of them, but one of the aspects has actually turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Now that the Exit beach stage is defunct after the old campsite was shut down, we've finally moved down to Novi Sad's official Strand Beach, offering plenty of daytime entertainment.

Apart from water sports facilities, restaurants and baking in the sun, Strand also offers daily chill-out sessions starting at 8a.m., as well as plenty of shade under its trees for tired revellers.

Lily Allen got the fans dancing, Photo by Sophie Cottrell

Favourable sleeping conditions have been hard to come by in the camp, where the heat makes it virtually impossible to get any kind of respite from the all-night exertions.

So we soldier on into Saturday, when the kings of electro-pop Kraftwerk await after what will be a much anticipated set by Moby. That will be followed by a mouth-watering tripleheader in the Dance Arena, with Steve Angello performing back-to-back with Sebastian Ingrosso after French audio-visual house music master Etienne de Crecy.

He follows the opening back-to-back session by Eric Prydz and Adam Beyer, and I can't wait to see how this mixture of mainstream house and minimal techno will go down with the crowd.