Festival season is slowly getting into full swing in Europe and this year Croatia is putting on display one of the most eclectic and full-bodied series of festivals in the entirety of the continent. Offering up a plethora of events including INmusic festival, Electric Elephant, Outlook, Terraneo and Unknown, Croatia is becoming the place to be in order to fulfill any of your aural and cathartic desires. At the forefront of this years festival list is Dimensions festival situated in Fort Punta Christo, Pula. The two-year-old festival has quickly acquired a highly regarded status amongst adorers of underground electronic music and was given a positive review in Resident Advisor in only its first year. It is rather interestingly set in a fort built at the end of the 19th century by the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in order to defend the city of Pula.
The festival isn’t exactly hosted by the fort though, rather, the festival inhabits the fort for a few days and transforms it into an ethereal smorgasbord of pulsating rhythm, pulchritudinous light, and open aired magnificence. The experience is enhanced due to the fact that the festival organizers and engineers pay attention to their surroundings. They mix and test each of their playing spaces meticulously in order to provide a truly breathtaking and unique listening experience depending on where you happen to be. Noah’s Ballroom is an ingeniously designed circular pit with a sound system in it that not only amplifies and reverberates whatever you are enjoying to a blissfully dizzying degree, but also serves to provide the architectural quaintness you never thought you’d need to truly be absorbed by music. The fort is peppered with unique venues, such as The Moat (yes, you shall be raving in a moat) and Mungo’s Arena. In addition to these venues the festival boasts 30 boat parties and beach parties on top of that, totalling an astonishing 11 landlocked stages and 200 artists to occupy them.
If you opt to purchase opening concert tickets (which I strongly urge you to do) these artists include Caribou (his dance alias moniker Daphni also makes an appearance), Darkside (you can read the review of their debut album, Psychic, here), Nils Frahm, and Kwabs. However, just getting the four day festival ticket entitles you to a salubrious amount of music to devour nonetheless, with the likes of Warpaint, Ben Klock, deep house legend Moodymann, the lovely Nina Kraviz, and the absolutely surreal Jon Hopkins available for your listening pleasure.
Getting to the festival couldn’t be easier and the organisers have put together several flight and accommodation packages. Pula is situated on the northern coastline of Croatia and can be reached by plane via (in order from closest airport to Dimensions to farthest) Pula, Trieste (Italy), Ljubljana (Slovenia), Zagreb (Croatia), and Venice (Italy). Other transport options are available. Travel within the city is simple enough as it isn’t that large geographically and driving to the festival from the city is approximately 7.5 km, which can easily be traveled via taxi.
In addition to buying Dimensions tickets, you can buy combination Dimensions/Outlook festival tickets as well seeing as Outlook takes place at the same location just one week later. If you do, I commend your stamina. Ticket prices can be found here as well as more general information here. This festival looks set to be one of this summer’s best, if you harbour even an inkling of love for electronic music I urge you to seriously consider rocking up at Fort Punta Christo from the 27th to the 31st of August.
