Love Family Park 2011

Love Family Park hails one of the finest festival atmospheres…

On paper, Love Family Park boasted a respectable line-up with Sven Väth (7hr Set), Ricardo Villalobos & Luciano (b2b), Loco Dice, Matthias Tanzmann, Marco Carola, Mathias Kaden & Daniel Stefanik (b2b), Karotte, Robert Dietz, Kollektiv Turmstrasse (Live), Dominik Eulberg, Sascha Dive, Guillaume & The Coutu Dumonts (Live), Zip, tINI and Frivolous (Live). But the amazing thing about this festival isn’t just the line-up of DJs, its also all the other components that go into creating a festival. There are three basic categories involved in creating any decent festival, which are obviously made up of separate components; Organisation, Atmosphere, Music…

Organisation was impeccable!
Starting with the queuing for entry, which was pretty jam packed, surprisingly passed in reasonable time considering they were body checking everyone and all bags were being searched. Upon entry, it was surprising to see a kind of cloak room hut for larger items such as Video Cameras, Mini Stereos and all kinds of other bits and pieces.
Germany seems to have a great recycling and litter reducing technique, where all empty plastic and glass bottles that are handed over to a deposit point, warrant a small cash back. It’s only a few cents, but it’s a system that works for more than one reason. It’s also a system that is used at the Love Family Park festival in conjunction with a token system for all purchases within the park. The are plenty of kiosks or huts around where plastic tokens can be purchased and used for buying drink or food. Upon your first purchase, you are charged a one token deposit for the plastic cup and given a voucher, which means you have to return the plastic cup when you buy another drink or return the plastic cup and the voucher in order to get your token back. And if you seem to have vouchers left over by the end of the day, you can always refund for your cash. You should see how remarkably clean the festival is compared to most!
Another great piece of organisation, was the bars themselves, with plenty scattered around the park and a massive rectangular bar situated under the motorway. Getting yourself a drink requires no more than a couple of minutes.

Atmosphere was perfect!
The train from Frankfurt out to Hanau was full of Love Family Park people, all drinking, enjoying, nothing too rowdy. And the same goes for the 5min walk from the station down to the Park, with everyone drink, mainly beer or Jaegermeister, some people dressed in some really creative ways, and many people mingling with others. Approaching the Park itself, there are plenty of stands selling beer of the street with music to get people in the mood. And this atmosphere is amplified once you actually enter the Love Family Park, with people who really love the music and are there just to enjoy it and mingle with other people. definitely reinforcing the name of the name of the festival.

Music was on form to battle that of most festivals!
First of all, the sound system was quite impressive, especially for the main stage and in the way every stage was laid out, you could actually walk either round the sides of the stage or even round the back. Something which holds advantages as you can easily slip into the sides of the crowd in linear with the stage or even stand away from the sides of the crowd and still feel the impact of the sound system.
In terms of the actually quality of music, Matthias Tanzmann and Loco Dice done remarkable jobs of getting things rocking and the crowd moving. Ricardo Villalobos & Luciano on the other failed to impress as they followed up from Loco Dice’s last record, which literally had the whole crowd grooving away. The couple seemed to be going one record each and Villalobos’ opener was too monotonous and boring to follow on from what Loco Dice had left behind. It may have been the case that they got things back up to speed shortly after, but at the sight of seeing plenty of people walking away and the fact that Sven Väth had already been rocking the main stage for 4hrs, we moved back over to the main stage after the first three records of Villalobos & Luciano.
This was probably the best decision made, as Sven just annihilated the crowd with one great record after another, knowing exactly how to work the crowd with some unexpected, yet seamless transition in the music. Dropping the likes of Matthew Dear – “Little People (Black City) (Sascha Dive Remix)” and Maetrik – “Crush On Me”.

Normally, DJs that get on the microphone can end up destroying a great set in a devastating way, but somehow Sven’s way off reaching for the microphone and saying a few words at the end of the festival as he closed his set, adding a little grace to the whole event. The DJ legend thanked the crowd and emphasised that without those people the festival would be that which it is. Also that he’s been DJing for 30 years and he’s not stopping because of his love for the music…

Overall Summary
A festival that promises to deliver what a festival should on all levels!