"... about to smack you up"

As the end of the festival season, the Valtifest in northern Amsterdam offered no less than a total of 96 DJs, bands and solo musicians. But it was only two groups that garnered the most attention: the participants of Red Bull Soundclash.

In their song ‘Make my day’ the two bands Wouter Hamel and C-mon & Kypski don’t mess around with niceties. ‘I’m about to smack you up,’ the lyrics go, ‘You better go out and pray, see this is the last we’ll see of your ass, come on and make my day.’ This collaboration, and the combination of two extremely different music worlds created a veritable hit in the Netherlands: Wouter Hamel a singer from the jazz genre and the four-strong hiphop-electro-funk band C-mon & Kypski described as being ‘Junkie XL meets Fatboy Slim meets Chemical Brothers’ The unusual combination was also something of a warm-up for the most recent Red Bull Soundclash. At the NDSM wharf in the north of Amsterdam Wouter Hamel and C-mon & Kypski stepped up for a showdown in front of 8000 spectators.

Red Bull Soundclash as a festival party hit

The location of this Red Bull Soundclash was the Valtifest – a genre-crossing festival that ended the Dutch open-air season on September 6. Two stages set up opposite each other in a half-open tent provided the turf for the musical duel of the two bands. C-mon and Kypski used samplers, turntables, drums and flutes; Wouter ‘The Voice’ Hamel countered with no less than nine musicians, a few of whom already had Red Bull Soundclash experience, and included trumpeters, saxophonists and a percussionist.

Live remix on stage

As in every Red Bull Soundclash event, the duel of decibels took place in several rounds, each with varying missions. The highlight of the show was the cover round. Both bands played a mash-up of Salt-n-Pepa’s ‘Push it’ and The Prodigy’s ‘Out of Space,’. Here Cmon & Krypki’s psychedelic, bleak interpretation proved to be unbeatable. ‘One of the dopest jams ever,’ is how Kypski described Red Bull Soundclash. And after the event also disclosed a secret. ‘In the round where the other band had to start a song that we then had to continue, I secretly sampled their show – so we remixed them live!’

New dates: LA, Gent and others

Red Bull Soundclash will be held in the Netherlands one more time this year. As well as the event in Utrecht on November 11, other Red Bull Soundclashes will rock Los Angeles, USA (September 25), Gent, Belgium (October 22), and Graz, Austria (November 14).