A sunbaked, radler-quenched sojourn on the Croatian coast is now as much of a tick on the global dance calendar as Ibiza. Dimensions festival, in its fifth year, has secured a neat corner of the market: with its parent festival Outlook catering to bass wreckheads later this week (“those kids will sleep anywhere” our taxi driver says, gesturing to a motorway verge), it falls to Dimensions to provide 4/4 to twentysomethings in expensive caps and Trilogy Tapes T-shirts.
Spread across multiple stages around a stone fort, it’s the kind of place that would be swathed in red tape in the UK. The atmosphere is one of decadent triumph, with ravers scampering joyfully around the ruins of something that was once sober and martial. Each day starts on the beach, with yacht rock, funk obscurities and cratedigger disco wafting around crimson-skinned bros and babes. The sunset sets by Mim Suleiman and Dele Sosimi, turn Afrobeat into a glorious celebration of the elements, while Melbourne producer Harvey Sutherland loops live violin into disco swoons, and Hunee brings out the Phil Collins.
The other chief daytime distraction is boat parties. K’Alexi plays CeCe Peniston, It Only Takes a Minute and other wedding smashes, while Eglo Records’ trip takes in cosmic reggae, sturdy house and, to beer-flinging mayhem, JME. Aaliyah’s Rock the Boat is de rigueur, of course, as is D’Angelo, who seems to crop up about every 15 minutes across the whole festival.
Come nightfall, the fort itself opens up, with its moat stage prompting Alton Towers-level queues. Shanti Celeste’s house set there oscillates between frowning ambient jams and gurning bangers, while Richie Hawtin and Rødhåd mass the techno faithful.
Scottish soundsystem Mungo’s Hi Fi doesn’t do The Bug justice, but as well as serving the drum’n’bass faithful, they host two of the weekend’s best sets. Beatrice Dillon quietly draws a line between Berlin and Africa, her polyrhythmic funk utterly intoxicating. Mala, meanwhile, shows why he’s bass music’s third way, keeping jungle’s skank and energy and remaining a visionary voice in British music well over a decade after dubstep’s heyday. A climactic dropping of Sir Spyro’s Topper Top incites absolute pandemonium.
The best set I see on the Void stage is from German DJ and musician Virginia, backed by Dexter and Steffi, with a florid and uplifting love letter to house songcraft. Timeless tales of lovin’, cheatin’ and lyin’ escalate in fervour, with Steffi going full Laurie Anderson on a vocoder in the back.
The main stage, meanwhile, in a dust-filled clearing reminiscent of Mad Max, also sees some sets for the ages – but the Moritz Von Oswald Trio isn’t one of them. Their drummer Tony Allen recently complained about the one-hour festival sets he plays these days, rather than the infinite voyages of the Fela Kuti era, and indeed he frustratingly sounds as if he’s warming up throughout. Hiatus Kaiyote’s meandering set is even worse, using jazz as a get-out clause to avoid structure, rhythm and melody – the very things that actually underpin jazz.
Much better are Octave One, who open up the seam between midwestern house and techno in a propulsive, hypertrophied show, underlined by the extraordinary Lawrence Burden, who nearly shakes his head off his shoulders to the beat. “The pain, the pressure,” chants a vocal, as a woman next to me has glitter massaged on to her naked body, and is later heard complaining about a waterlogged kaleidoscope. Daniel Avery’s following minimal set can only seem bloodless in comparison.
Larry Heard, on the same stage, is utterly spectacular. Looking something like a kindly Little League coach, the creator of Chicago house’s most psychedelically elastic basslines is joined by Peter Kay/Scarface cross Mr White, who delivers sermons on the mic. Their music is romantic, serious and sure-hearted, and is greeted with waves of euphoria. New tracks such as Qwazars show that Heard is no nostalgia act, either. I head over to Midland, but brilliant though his disco-house set is, it can only seem fussy compared with Heard’s spiritual elevation. The main stage eventually closes with Motor City Drum Ensemble’s disco crowd-pleasers, and a typically globetrotting set from Gilles Petersen, whose mix of Ata Kak into Josh Wink is a serotonin waterfall.
From Heard to Loefah’s history-of-house set and beyond, the focus overall is very much on Chicago and Detroit. Nearly everyone, from polymorphous UK selectors such as Ben UFO and Pearson Sound to midwesterners such as Kyle Hall, and the Afrobeat contingent, play the aluminium twang of the 808’s cowbell or its parched claps and snares. Is the snobbery around preset digital sound paradoxically sending people back to the presets of an earlier era? Or, perhaps the 808 is simply the Fender Strat of the house scene. Even if there is a whiff of “good ol’ days” conservatism, it’s conservatism that still elevates. The novelty of a Croatian festival may have worn off, but Dimensions is still paradise for anyone in thrall to a pulse.
