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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