New Fest Is Music-Friendly Secret

Dutch promoter Friendly Fire says its new Best Kept Secret Festival will above all be a music-friendly event.

A map of the festival site from the event's Facebook profile.

The capacity of the festival on the event site at Beekse Bergen (June 21-23) hasn’t been fixed, although it’s already confirmed Arctic Monkeys, Sigur Ros, Alt-J, and Portishead. It also has No Age, Swim Deep, and Skaters.

Festival director Robert Swarts says the event has been modeled on such festivals as Melt in Germany, Spain’s Primavera Sound and Sweden’s Way Out West.

“As music fans and concert organisers, for the last couple of years we’ve been walking around these festivals and we’ve been full of admiration for them,” he said. “These festivals focus 100 percent on music, draw a large crowd with a number of famous names, but give at least as much attention to new artists and various musical styles. And so do we.

“This is the festival we would like to visit ourselves,” Swarts explained, echoing the words of Luger promoter Ola Broquist when starting Way Out West in 2007.

Friendly Fire says “musical discovery” is central to the Best Kept Secret.

“We think that in 2013, festival visitors want to see and hear what they listen to at home, en route and online: from indie and dub step on 3VOOR12, to hip-hop on Spotify, garage rock on the LeGuessWho blog and meanwhile listening to Alt-J on 3FM,” explained fest spokesman Niels Aalberts. “At Best Kept Secret we translate that broad taste in music into more than 50 performing artists on various stages.”

Utrecht-based concert booking agency Friendly Fire, which has been 25 percent-owned by German concert giant FKP Scorpio since last January, also operates the 30,000-capacity Indian Summer Festival at Broek op Langedijk.

This year’s Indian Summer is June 15-16.