Sziget Festival – Day Two

Before I get into anything serious, I have to say that this year's festival wasn't my favorite in terms of performers. In fact, it was one of the weakest in recent years — at least in terms of my personal favorites — so most of the first day was spent listening to the names that really interested me for the whole week.

Regardless, the plan my brother and I had put together was sacred and inviolable, so we went ahead with what we had planned and tried to get the most out of it. Okay, more or less.

The day started with a bit of a rush, as we messed up the timing a little, and Shawn Mendes proved to be such a big headliner that there was a real crowd on the way there. After overcoming some crowd pressure, feeling everyone's sweat, we managed to get to the entrances, where the second challenge awaited us. They wouldn't let us in through the VIP entrance. Half of the assistants and door staff said, sure, our pass os fine for it, go ahead, but the one person standing guard there said he had been told the opposite... This was completely incomprehensible to us, as we had been able to enter all the VIP areas at the festival, but the VIP entrance could not be accessed with our ticket.

Fortunately, the normal line wasn't unbearably long, although such inconsistency leaves a bad taste in the mouth, especially when you consider that this year, ticket collection, entry, and exit are much more complicated than at any time in the past three years.

Finally, we got in and hung out at Dropyard, because my brother's schoolmate was performing there with his band, cancel. and yes, the dot is part of the name. The concert had some extra surprises in store, because I bumped into one of my friends, Leon, who is a particularly exciting character. He's an American rapper who got stuck in Budapest during Covid and has been living and working here ever since. We chatted a bit, and it turned out that the frontman of cancel. is with the same management as him.

The future's not moocher

Meanwhile, the members of Kowler Rangers slowly arrived, and then came the next surprise: my friend Viktor, a sound engineer, works backstage at the same stage during the festival, so he also came out to say hello.

He made me promise that I would drop by after the show because they have an exhibition hall with their latest curiosities. That's what happened, because the guys were really into Nelly Furtado, but I'm, well, not really, so I decided to skip the concert, considering that Furtado's music is quite far from my taste.

Instead, I went to the DiGiCo room, where Viktor showed me what kind of sound console they use on the main stage.

It turned out that this exhibition room is specifically designed for the sound teams of the performers who are coming to see what equipment they will be working with and on the other hand, it is a place to see the latest innovations.

One such technological innovation is that the ear monitors can be adjusted individually in a three-dimensional space, so musicians don't have to settle for the classic panning system, and they can hear the other musicians on stage perfectly from where they are actually standing. By the way, technological developments are currently underway that will enable the monitor system to detect where a given musician is standing while they are moving, and all we will have to do is turn our heads to change the position of the source of the sound, as if everything were really coming from the instruments. That's pretty cool.

Then I got to try out the new sound consoles, which had tons of extra features.

One of them even had a built-in bottle opener. My mind was blown. I also got to try out some special analog equipment from a Hungarian company, which is exciting because it is entirely Hungarian-designed and manufactured, and has won awards at international competitions. It is used by top sound engineers and producers for bands such as Slipknot, Ice Nine Kills, The Killers, and Avenged Sevenfold.

Golden boys for a Golden role

Meanwhile, we finished our coffee, then Viktor and I went to see the Ivan & The Parazol concert, who sounded outrageously good. They are a well-known Hungarian band who draw inspiration from the 70s. However, we could only listen to a few songs, as Viktor had to go to work and I had to go to the main stage because I wanted to check out Shawn Mendes' concert.

This kind of standard pop music doesn't usually grab me, but the guy has two songs that I like, and I was very curious to see how this light music could be transformed into a real, big-stage experience. In the end, it was Mendes himself who worked the magic, surpassing my expectations in terms of singing. On the other hand, I can consider him as a main headline act compared to Charlie XCX, given that there were far more people at his performance and he did a better job of handling the task.

ould be lying if I said that the concert held my attention throughout, as in the middle section he piled on songs that were musically almost identical, more balladic and softer, but there were moments when he really got the party going and the audience loved it.

However, at the end of the show, I rushed over to the Jukebox, which was a much larger stage this year than last year. This is where the performer who interested me the most that day appeared. Revenge of the Synth. Yes, it's Star Wars music, but on paper it's synthwave style. Well, that wasn't the case. I didn't find anywhere else on the second day that had such a fun, punchy, and entertaining mix of styles as these guys did, while they also put a lot into the show with their costumes and ideas. Metal, funky, techno, drum and bass, and I could go on. They covered a lot of styles, so their performance deserves a short review, which I'll post soon in the concert reviews section. ;)