Meakusma Festival doesn’t stick to a conventional sonic blueprint

In the ‘90s, when the sleepy Belgian town of Eupen was still considered a hotbed for raves, locals made the excursion across the border to Cologne in Western Germany where they scoured record stores for new music. Exchanging rare vinyl in Germany for quality club nights in Belgium, music fans exploited the perks of each other’s dance music scenes at a time when the electronic sound was beginning to go supersonic, driving just an hour from one city to the other. Michael Kreitz, the founder of Eupen-based experimental festival Meakusma, remembers it well.

Sitting in the foyer of the Meakusma site, remarkably calm and soft-spoken despite being in the throes of running a 1,200-capacity event, Michael lets Mixmag into the secret of curating a festival line-up to expert precision: record shopping. Today, Michael still makes the pilgrimage across the German border to find new music where he’ll hand-pick artists to perform at his annual event, founded in 2016 alongside Christophe Houyon. Meakusma began as a label long before it became a festival, hence the knack for record digging, with a steady focus on experimental music. Over the years, the imprint has shifted sonically along with the festival itself, playing host to eclectic, future-thinking projects from all over the world.

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So it comes as no surprise that Meakusma has become a masterclass in curation and musical discovery. Booking selections this year include the likes of experimental collective Rave At Your Fictional Border, South Africa-hailing ambient experimenter Portable, London DJ and radio host Josey Rebelle, Belgium’s own dancefloor commander Nosedrip, and over 100 more across the festival’s four days. Returning for its sixth edition in 2024, Meakusma welcomed over 1,000 guests across the weekend with more than half of those travelling from other countries to attend. Word has it that some attendees even travel straight from Berlin experimental festival Atonal, which takes place a week before, to get their second fix of off-kilter dance music.

Though a small town, Eupen is quickly filled with headsy, well-behaved visitors come the start of Meakusma. Located in Belgium but near the borders to three other countries (Germany, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg), Eupen is a mixture of cultures and languages, a leafy town with cobbled streets and quaint, Hansel and Gretel-esque houses surrounded by drooping pine trees. Those in attendance stay on a campsite next to the festival’s main site, Alter Schlachthof, a former slaughterhouse-turned-multi room event complex featuring a luscious garden filled with greenhouses and sunflowers – a firm contradiction to the history of the venue itself.

One of the venue’s five rooms, Kesselraum, acts as an intimate space where many of the festival’s DJ-led shows take place. Tehran-born sound artist Farahnaz opens Kesselraum under its dark and moody lighting, performing a minimalist vinyl set where she pulls apart fractions of sound delicately, records crackling and spitting like the prelude of a horror film soundtrack. Later in the same room, New York’s Lamin Fofana, who grew up in Sierra Leone and Guinea before moving to the US as a teenager, delivers the first of his three scheduled shows, quickly followed by his second when he’s joined by Italian experimental artist Katatonic Silentio, who go back-to-back for the duration of the evening. Their slow-building set weans punters into the night, moving from breathy sounds to more polished productions.

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“For that set, we both wanted to get on the CDJs so it turned into like, ‘okay, we’re sharing tunes now’,” laughs Lamin Fofana. Speaking on his third performance of the weekend in hidden room Speicher, where he sat at the front of a dimly-lit, dead silent crowd, Lamin explains: “That third show was a lot more improvised. I walked into the room and saw people sitting down, which I thought was nice. I asked for a chair so I could sit too, and asked them to turn the lights down low,” he explains. “I wanted to create a space that felt like a proper listening environment, where people could lay or sit down if they wanted – almost like a dreamscape.”

Many sets across the weekend possess that same dream-like quality – take Meakusma’s off-site locations in the town’s historic churches for example, where punters gather in their masses to hear tear-jerking orchestras or New York-style jazz, lining each and every church pew. Another external location, Eupen Plaza, hosts several shows throughout day two and three in a disused shopping centre, making an unusual backdrop to a handful of experimental shows. Back on the main site, Alter Schlachthof’s bell tower hides an unsuspecting sound installation where visitors are invited to speak into a looping cassette tape, which continues to play back over and over in a mesmerising chant.

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While experimental music is a fixture of the festival’s daytime programme, by night, DJs take centre stage. Halle, one of the venue’s main rooms, opens up by evening to an enormous, club-like space, where artists including Manchester’s Tom Boogizm deploys screwface sonics into the night with a selection of hard industrial, IDM, and dembow, and the Netherlands’ upsammy journeys through UK techno and jungle backed by trippy live A/V from visual artist spoOky.

Heuboden, another space on the main site, though often hard to enter due to the sheer volume of people attempting their way inside (Meakusma admits this is an issue to be fixed at future editions), sees a broad range of artists throughout the day. By night, the room is filled with the sounds of London turntablist NikNak who shells upwards of 160 BPM in a sci fi-meets-jungle approach to her set, or new-on-the-scene duo Angel Rocket with their unusual blend of club music and live violin.

Meakusma’s beloved outdoor stage Hinterhof opens up on the festival’s penultimate day, with a stacked rig provided by Brussels-based 54 Soundsystem. Punters bask under the late summer sun while others feel the bass up close, easing into the day with transcendental sounds from Bristol record label Accidental Meetings. By the time the sun has fallen behind the awning, crowds are pushed up against the rig dancing to Le Motel’s eclectic, bass-bin shaking selections.

Brussels-by-Bristol duo Ojoo & Ossia help to close Hinterhof, having become annual favourites at Meakusma known for their atmospheric, building sets, hurling experimental dub and deep, rattling bass. “We shared lots of music together, but we didn’t have much of a plan so there were some nice surprises in there,” says Morocco-born, Brussels-based DJ Ojoo. “It’s nice to play with Ossia because he always has a dub siren and all sorts of effects, this time he had a drum synth that created this cool wave sound,” she explains. “The energy was really nice, we had a super responsive crowd and really wanted to challenge each other.”

Realistically, Meakusma has the makings for a large-scale experimental festival like some of its European counterparts – but the team behind the festival are adamant that it shouldn’t continue to grow from its current capacity to keep its homegrown feeling of community alive. It’s what makes Meakusma such a special standalone event, where music fanatics gather to experience untapped sounds and styles, and rules don’t apply. While its cross-venue setup means you’ll always have a sense of FOMO that you’re not checking out who’s performing next door, Meakusma’s main appeal isn’t just in its wide-ranging programming, but also its community spirit that runs strong in the festival’s ethos.

Gemma Ross is Mixmag's Assistant Editor, follow her on Twitter