Outskirts, an island of its own

_{Our little island stage, tucked away from everything else, deserves attention of its own.}

_{Set apart in nature, that distance carries into the music too. This year the focus sits on the sound itself, split across two days: Friday runs on drum and bass, leftfield and breaks, Saturday turns to house, progressive house, and UK rave.}

_{OUTSKIRTS,SETTLED FOR GOOD}

Four years of trials in, Outskirts has settled for good. It moved twice before finding its current spot, and along the way it turned into a genuine fan favourite: strange machinery scattered around, cushions piled up near the booth, a corner people kept coming back to.

Last year Outskirts turned into a full 360° stage on a new part of the site, close to trees and water, with a lineup built around broken beat, leftfield, house and heavy bass. It worked. The move gave the stage its own corner and its own focus, and both stay exactly where they were this year.

What changes this year is the terrain around it: the site now stretches further along one side of Outskirts, linking straight into the new chill area around the lake. That connection pulls Outskirts further into the flow of the festival, while the stage keeps its own tucked away identity, reachable through more entries and open to whoever wanders that far. Another change sits in the sound department: extra subs reinforce the back of the stage, wrapping that area in bass without pushing volume onto the rest of the site. The on-stage speaker setup is also being standardised: Outskirts, Bridge and Viaduct now all run the same system used at Fuse, d&b V7P tops paired with d&b Sub subwoofers. Same care, now on the festival site.

_{TWO DAYS, TWO DIRECTIONS}

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FRIDAY‍

Friday runs on drum and bass, breaks and leftfield. Early nineties London built this sound in rooms that weren't made for music, jungle mutating into something harder and faster. Thirty years later, a big part of that lineage appears  on a similar stage. The booking leans deliberately into a specific drum and bass audience. Last year that focus found real ground, turning Outskirts into one of the few spaces on site built entirely around a genre that doesn't always get this kind of room. This year we push further into that same revival.

The Brussels DJ Shoplifter runs a monthly show on Kiosk Radio and stitches together UK garage, jungle and bass heavy breaks with fast, instinctive transitions. AliA follows in a similar spirit, moving through broken beat, house and percussive club cuts with long blends and off grid rhythm, built from years behind the decks at Horst and running her own label, Artisjok Records. Two Brussels voices, opening the day on home turf.

From there the lineage runs straight back to the UK. Mia Koden works 140 tempo bass, dubstep and UK breaks, raised on the soundsystems of South London. Mantra brings close to two decades of Rupture, the drum and bass night she runs with her partner Double O, one of London's most respected. Special Request is Paul Woolford, moving between hardcore, jungle and drum and bass since the nineties, and Sully sits in the same territory, jungle rooted and impossible to pin down. Four names, two pairings, one thread: London's low end, carried from the pirate radio era into now.

Goldie and SHERELLE close the night. SHERELLE doesn't do slow, and never has, digging through jungle, footwork and anything above 160 BPM since her Reprezent Radio days. Goldie needs no introduction: one of the artists who built UK jungle, drum and bass and breakbeat hardcore in the first place, and who also helped found Metalheadz. One set carries the history. The other keeps proving it never stopped moving.

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SATURDAY

Saturday turns towards house, progressive house and UK rave culture. It stays a varied day though, moving from dancefloor energy in the afternoon into deep selector territory by night, with artists who play slower, put real weight into every selection and pull from the 90s and 00s.

Sookie and su:zy open with a back-to-back, two of Brussels' newest names to break through. Sookie taught herself to DJ during lockdown and digs across ambient, dub, tribal downtempo, trance, techno and goa, with a soft spot for early electronic music. su:zy runs synæ, his GIMIC Radio residency built around synesthesia, treating each set as one continuous story. One is a digger, the other a storyteller, and together that's the tension driving the set. The local thread continues with Fais Le Beau, another digger, and the closest thing the day has to a hometown hero. Co-founder of Gay Haze, one of Brussels' longest-running daytime queer parties, his sets move through 90s house, balearic, leftfield disco, New Beat and trance. Three names, one city, before the day turns to names from further afield.

Roza Terenzi brings a fully live, self-produced set across breaks, electronica, house and techno, backed by her debut album Modern Bliss, a tightly produced, fluid and euphoric listening experience that made several best of the year and most anticipated lists. Sedef Adasï is on a similar rise, breaking through across the whole genre of house, working 90s trance into a modern futuristic sound built from acid, disco and techno. Different routes into the same genre, both pointing at where house goes next.

Batu carries a simple idea into his set: a solid sub-bass foundation is enough, everything on top stays open. Ten years into his label Timedance, that approach makes for hypnotic club music, leftfield and breakier than the rest of the day, made to move a crowd rather than impress it.  Ben UFO closes out on that same open-ended philosophy, fitting given he's released Batu's music on his own label Hessle Audio. Close to two decades into being one of the UK's most respected selectors, he's built that reputation on knowing exactly what a room needs. The crowd that's been moving to Batu finds him waiting to take them home.

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