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Zoukout festival is Asia’s biggest dance festival, taking place in Singapore. Attracted by a top class line up, about 15.000 people came to this year’s festival. This years Zoukout festival was located at Tenjong beach on a holiday island resort called Sentosa. We arrived around 10 pm , and the first people where already dancing. The festival area was absolutely amazing, with 3 different stages, several tents and different activities spread around the beach. A make up fence was barring anyone from entering the water, which was regularly controlled by the Police and understandable as one visitor drowned during the first Festival.  At 11 pm we took a look at the “Hip-Hop/Mambo Jambo” stage, where all the Zouk Club resident DJs were playing. At this time though the music was a rather strange mix of 80’s chart hits, including Eddy Grant’s “Gimme Hope Joana”, not exactly what one would expect from a dance festival. We then went over to the Velvet Underground stage, where Rainer Truby was giving his best, which was somehow not good enough, as only 10-20 people where paying attention to his set. Strange to see a well known DJ like Reiner Truby playing in front of a small audience, but that just happens at Festivals with such a line up. Most people we talked to at this point where waiting for either Timo Mass or the big star of the night, Paul Van Dyk.
Around midnight the main area got more and more crowded and people where still queuing up in front of the entrance. DJ Satoshi Tomiie was playing in front of a dancing crowd and an amazing lightshow. Now the party really started to take of. We went again to the Hip-Hop Mambo Jambo area where Jazzy Jeff had now taken over the stage. He played a really interesting hip-hop mix, with lots of Jazz tunes, and declared that he wanted to “educate the people through music”. The atmosphere was great at this area and more and more people came to see Jazzy Jeff. For us this was one the highlights of the night.
It was now around 1 o’clock and we suddenly felt a little tired, which is no wonder as we are conditioned to Bangkok’s early curfew. However, we could still see people just arriving at the festival, which was about to last until the early morning hours. Now DJ Miguel Migs was playing a nice deep house set at the Velvet Underground stage which got a little more crowded than before.
 Timo Maas started playing on the main stage around 2 o’clock, where now most of the people gathered. With thousand of people dancing on a beach to some of the best Dance music DJs in the world this was an incredible event. At this time Joe Claussell was probably playing at the Velvet Underground stage, which we totally missed, but with so many great DJ’s you have to make hard decisions sometimes. Needless to say that the people where going even more crazy when Paul Van Dyk took the stage.
Altogether we had a great time, though we missed the easy going attitude of Bangkok’s party crowd a little bit. It felt sometimes like being in an MTV video with lots of sexy (and cute) girls and handsome male models. Nice to watch but a little bit hard to get to know the people. But that might be just a cultural difference. The organization was great and very efficient. The line up was world class, which helped to push the costs for the event up to around 28,6 million Baht. Tracy Phillips, marketing manager of Zouk, was especially happy about “The fact that the number of tourists that came through, increased by about 10%, showed the reach we have and makes for a truly multi- racial event”.
We will definitely come back next time.
Zoukout 2004 Singapore Pictures
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