At Belgium’s Horst, electronic music, skate and community collide

It’s 10 min­utes before mid­night on the Fri­day of Belgium’s Horst Arts and Music Fes­ti­val, just under an hour’s dri­ve away from the cen­tre of Brus­sels, and Kuba ​’97 is play­ing at The Soleil Rouge. The stage, named after a giant, reflec­tive red disc that looms over the left side of the dance­floor, is packed. On the right, two huge con­crete gas tow­ers are illu­mi­nat­ed with abstract pro­jec­tions, as a war­bling bassline leads a plod­ding-tem­poed kick­drum from the soundsys­tem. Out of seem­ing­ly nowhere, a flur­ry of keys lifts the dancefloor’s mood, and hands raise into the air in unison.

Mov­ing between dusty house, old school pro­to-tech­no and sub­tle goa-flecked chug, inter­spersed with sparse moments of the­atrics, it’s a change of pace and style for the Brus­sels-based DJ, who is usu­al­ly asso­ci­at­ed with heav­ier, dark­er sonics. 

“The Soleil Rouge is a very warm, more play­ful stage,” Kuba ​’97, real name Kobe Ver­ho­even, explains after­wards. ​“Peo­ple usu­al­ly asso­ciate me for play­ing more deep­er, psy­che­del­ic stuff, so the Soleil Rouge gave me an option to dive into a very dif­fer­ent part of my col­lec­tion. I went from ​’80s Bel­gian stuff to US house from the ear­ly 2000s, so I went from very dif­fer­ent eras but in a way that I could link them together.”

It’s a spe­cial bag of records he’s packed for a spe­cial occa­sion; away from his reg­u­lar tour­ing sched­ule, he works year-round as part of the Horst pro­duc­tion team. Play­ing the evening’s clos­ing set is some­thing of a home­com­ing for him, in front of a strong con­tin­gent of Brus­sels scene locals, fes­ti­val crew mem­bers, and dancers trav­el­ling from fur­ther afield.

“Yeah, it was pret­ty busy,” he says. ​“When I stepped into the booth it was pret­ty daunt­ing to see 1,500 peo­ple in front of you, but then when I looked a bit clos­er, I could see all my friends, but also peo­ple from the fes­ti­val, vol­un­teers who have been help­ing out for a cou­ple of weeks, so once you see all of these friend­ly faces around you, it gave me comfort.”

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Set in ASI­AT Park – a for­mer mil­i­tary base in the Brus­sels satel­lite town of Vil­vo­orde, the week­end sees a high-qual­i­ty slate of elec­tron­ic music. The open­ing Thurs­day sees a par­ty ignit­ing per­for­mance from Dr Banana, two sep­a­rate sets from Latin tech­no fig­ure­head Ver­ra­co, and a clos­ing skank from dub­step day-oner Mala play­ing back-to-back with Cana­di­an nu school­er Dar­win. Fri­day is high­light­ed by Paqui­ta Gordon’s deep dug tech­no and trance grooves and Poly­go­nia & Steffi’s breaksy indus­tri­al rhythms, while the Sat­ur­day sees gyrofield, as well as Mia Koden & AliA, show off their unique, futur­is­tic takes on bass music.

But there’s far more to Horst than just the music, which is appar­ent every­where you look. Art instal­la­tions run along paths and in the fes­ti­val site’s nooks and cran­nies, while each of the stages are filled with char­ac­ter, as well as pur­pose and intent. A redesigned pavil­ion stage, Weav­ing Weeds, is roofed by a thick can­vas made from Japan­ese knotweed – an inva­sive species picked from the festival’s grounds. Near­by, a new stage designed in col­lab­o­ra­tion with tech­no leg­end DVS1, Dark Skies, fea­tures a futur­is­tic take on sound and dance­floor dynam­ics, with a giant met­al frame over­head hold­ing dozens of indi­vid­ual speak­ers that means no mat­ter where you are stand­ing, the son­ic expe­ri­ence remains the same.

And out­side of the three days a year that the fes­ti­val is on, ASI­AT Park is open to the pub­lic as a com­mu­ni­ty and cre­ative space. It’s a home to sports facil­i­ties, as well as art and design – stages and instal­la­tions are left up year-round with the pub­lic able to vis­it, while sea­son­al expo­si­tions plat­form the work of local artists and res­i­dents. Look down at your feet at The Ring stage, which is marked by a cir­cu­lar, high-ris­ing met­al frame that is rem­i­nis­cent of a Vic­to­ri­an gash­old­er, and you’ll see white mark­ings on the floor, which were laid down for its usu­al usage as a bas­ket­ball court. 

The cen­tre point of the fes­ti­val fea­tures a per­ma­nent bar and restau­rant, while build­ings used for art and pro­duc­tion are the home to busi­ness­es and stu­dios. Last year, Horst Club opened, util­is­ing the festival’s Swirl and Garage stages to throw marathon 24-hour par­ties year-round.

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Across the sum­mer sea­son, fes­ti­vals roll into fields, towns, forests and cities across the world for a week­end, where often tens of thou­sands par­ty and stomp their feet, before pack­ing down and dis­pers­ing once again. There’s a beau­ty to that tran­sience, but it comes with an impact – lit­ter, waste and a size­able car­bon foot­print are unavoid­able by-prod­ucts of organ­is­ing such large-scaled events.

Rail­ing against that imper­ma­nence, and har­ness­ing the pow­er of build­ing and design, has been an inher­ent part of Horst’s ethos since it start­ed over a decade ago, with its first edi­tion tak­ing place at its for­mer site in a moat­ed cas­tle in the Hage­land hills. Wim Thi­js, who is one of Horst’s co-founders, explains how the festival’s vision was first con­ceived along with fel­low founders Jochem Dael­man and Math­ias Stae­lens – an archi­tect by trade.

“Jochem and I have back­grounds in music, and Math­ias added this ele­ment of the space being real­ly impor­tant as well. As an organ­is­er, events are basi­cal­ly all run in the same fash­ion – you have soundsys­tems, the bar is a cer­tain way – and if you are a vis­i­tor, entrances, toi­lets etc. are also a cer­tain way.”

Those stan­dard designs often car­ry the same issues that must be solved, when­ev­er any­one is think­ing of organ­is­ing a par­ty. ​“So how do you tack­le all of the prob­lems organ­is­ing a fes­ti­val? And he said: ​‘Let’s ask artists, let’s ask archi­tects.’ From that point on, Horst took this approach to be a col­lab­o­ra­tive plat­form, and rather than ask­ing stan­dard pro­duc­tion com­pa­nies to build some­thing, to instead always involve artists and archi­tects to think about a cer­tain problem.”

Its debut edi­tion saw a small-scale event, with 1,000 atten­dees and fea­tured a cou­ple of stages along­side an art exhi­bi­tion. Both the fes­ti­val, and its for­mer site’s man­agers, saw its val­ue instant­ly, with the art exhi­bi­tion remain­ing open for anoth­er two months after the weekend’s final track was run, and con­tin­u­ing to draw vis­i­tors through­out the summer.

“The com­pa­ny that man­aged the cas­tle were super hap­py with it, because peo­ple came for the expo­si­tion, and then we start­ed real­is­ing the pow­er of the dura­bil­i­ty mod­el as well,” Thi­js con­tin­ues. ​“So these two ele­ments became the foun­da­tion of Horst’s vision in the end: one, tack­le your prob­lems by ask­ing artists and two, if we build stuff, putting so much ener­gy, effort and infra­struc­ture in place, make sure it has a last­ing impact.”

Horst moved to its cur­rent loca­tion in 2019, after real­is­ing that it had out­grown its pre­vi­ous home. An emp­ty lot on the fringes of Vil­vo­orde gave them a blank can­vas for their art and archi­tec­ture, but also in mov­ing from a quaint, cen­turies-old cas­tle to a for­mer mil­i­tary base on the out­skirts of a city, the team quick­ly realised that to have a true impact in the area would require a broad­er range of thinking.

“If you look at the sta­tis­tics, Vil­vo­orde is the youngest city in Bel­gium,” Thi­js explains. ​“And we also have over 150 nation­al­i­ties liv­ing here – so it it’s a big city, with big city issues, but it’s not fund­ed like one, say Brus­sels or Lon­don for exam­ple. So there are all these dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties that basi­cal­ly exist on islands, and there’s hard­ly any spaces for young people.”

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And this year, there’s a new per­ma­nent struc­ture for the city’s young peo­ple, set a stone’s throw away from the site’s rock climb­ing gym. A rec­tan­gu­lar out­door skatepark, fea­tur­ing ramps, rails and a small bowl. Paint­ed in baby blue and fea­tur­ing a neat, almost Bauhaus-esque sim­plic­i­ty, it’s set oppo­site the site’s cur­rent­ly exist­ing indoor skatepark, and pro­vides a begin­ner-friend­ly space for peo­ple to learn how to skate.

It’s part­ly a prac­ti­cal space for skat­ing, while also being a piece of art in its own right. ​“I’m obsessed by geo­met­ri­cal abstrac­tion – I’m always look­ing for the per­fect shape for the build­ing,” says its design­er and archi­tect Jean-Benoît Vétil­lard. ​“There are sev­en autonomous sculp­tures, that when you com­bine them, it cre­ates a whole skatepark. We had the pos­si­bil­i­ty to make it larg­er, but I said no, because it has to be a space for chil­dren to be able to learn, and not just the experts.”

Vétil­lard was brought in to cre­ate the project after he had teamed up with artist Raphael Zar­ka to cre­ate the bold­ly coloured skatepark set out­side the Cen­tre Pom­pi­dou in line with the Olympic Games. He worked with local Bel­gian skaters and design­ers, such as Jut­ter Lan­noo, an archi­tec­ture stu­dent who interned on the project. ​“Besides here, there aren’t a lot of places to skate in Vil­vo­orde, and they don’t have a local skate shop,” Lan­noo says. ​“I was sur­prised that Horst want­ed to do it, but it’s very cool. It’s hard to find mon­ey for skate parks because it’s con­nect­ed to sub­cul­ture and graf­fi­ti, and even destruc­tion sometimes.”

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Next Sat­ur­day, May 31, it will see a skate com­pe­ti­tion held there for locals to come and try out tricks. It’s just anoth­er rea­son for young peo­ple to come and vis­it ASI­AT Park away out­side of fes­ti­val week­end, and a space for local peo­ple to hang out. ​“It’s impor­tant that the youth have spaces where they can go to just have fun,” Lan­noo con­tin­ues. ​“When­ev­er I go skat­ing, I nev­er go alone – I go with friends, because it’s com­mu­ni­ty and it’s cul­ture.”

The skatepark is just one exam­ple of the sev­er­al projects that Horst is across around the year, with the team always think­ing about expan­sion, and find­ing new ways to serve its fans and its neigh­bours. ​“From the out­side you see this hype fes­ti­val that’s sharp with its pro­gram­ming,” says Thi­js. ​“But it’s actu­al­ly just a cat­a­lyst for this dream we have, which is ener­gis­ing this old mil­i­tary base into a hybrid/​cultural hub.”

On the Horst’s Sat­ur­day night, as clock rapid­ly approach­es 2am, the feel­ing of com­mu­ni­ty is in full swing. Eris Drew blends a mix of heads down house music and hand-rais­ing vocal trance. With just min­utes left, she rais­es a record over her head, before play­ing the festival’s final record – an edit of Nina Simone. Out of the same soundsys­tem that Kuba ​’97 rocked the night before, the singer’s vocals soar: ​“It’s a new dawn / It’s a new day / It’s a new life for me / And I’m feel­ing good.”

For more infor­ma­tion on Horst Arts and Music Fes­ti­val, vis­it its offi­cial web­site.

Isaac Muk is Huck’s dig­i­tal edi­tor. Fol­low him on Bluesky.

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