Over 3, 4 and 5 July 2015, tens of thousands of partyers turned up at Herchesfeld to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Den Atelier's Rock-A-Field festival with sun, sand, songs and - unexpectedly - swings.
This year's event represented its second as a three day-long festival, and brand new features and scenic spots on site reaffirmed how far the event has come since its much more small-scale beginnings in 2006.
The festival has definitely diversified in recent years, allowing for it to cater to a wide range of tastes and welcome even more music enthusiasts into its midst.
The anniversary of the festival was kicked off with Sixties rock-inspired sextet Fox, whose main guitarist Jimmy Leen is a seasoned RAF performer, having played at the festival with previous band Versus You no less than four times, and three days of musical menagerie ensued.
Eagles of Death Metal aptly demonstrated why they represent another Rock-A-Field favourite. Their return to the Rock-A-Field stage incited the audience just as much as their 2009 performance, pumping the crowd up with songs from their first follow-up album to 2008's 'Heart On'.
Brns were also a welcome addition to the Rock-A-Field line-up. The Belgian quartet kept crowds on their toes with a melange of different genres, and will no doubt be making a return to the festival in future years.
The energy of the festival was palpable, and was helped in no small way from spirited performances from English rockers Marmozets; Luxembourgish Math-Rock group Mutiny on the Bounty; and Skip the Use's Mat Bastard, who each used every corner of the stage to get the crowd going. On-lookers were even occasionally incorporated into the performance, as in the case of Echosmith's set, where two strangers from the crowd were brought onstage as impromptu backing dancers to Teen Choice Award nominated hit, 'Cool Kids'.
alt-J hypnotised the swaying audience with a haunting opening of 'Hunger of the Pine', and provided a cleansing calm before the storm that was the hotly-anticipated performance from 2015 headliners, Muse. Muse are certainly no strangers to transfixing a crowd, with their 2004 Glastonbury performance having been voted by music magazine NME as the festival's greatest ever. It was no surprise then that merely at the opening bars of old favourite 'Supermassive Black Hole' the crowd was turned into a pulsing frenzy under a night sky that was soon illuminated with celebratory confetti and fireworks.
The professionalism of the festival was evident in the new features that demonstrated a deliberate effort from the festival organisers to make the three days as comfortable and fun as possible. A hammock area, rotating water spray feature and a new heat-releasing roof over the Startin' Stage guaranteed the first condition, whilst contests involving the limbo, Twister, giant table tennis and cornholing ensured the presence of the second. DJ dr.gonZo added yet more musical genres to the mix, with a DJ deck in the beach area blasting Caribbean dance tunes and transporting festival-goers to a sandy paradise.
The scenery had also been carefully considered, with the creation of a brand new lantern-illuminated path through the forest to an area filled with food trucks of every variety of dish.
This is a festival which has most certainly established itself as a source of national pride, and will hopefully continue to grow and expand for decades to come.
Photos by Sarah Graham (Top: Matthew Bellamy, frontman of headliners Muse. Bottom: Festival-goers at this year's Rock-A-Field)
