Line-up:
Ben Howard, James Blake, Lykke Li, Belle and Sebastian, The Coral, Josh T. Pearson, Villagers, Dum Dum Girls, Battles, Darkstar, Agnes Obel, José Gonzàlez performing with The Gothenburg String Theory, No Age, WU LYF, Architecture in Helsinki, The Bees, Dan Deacon, Factory Floor, James Vincent McMorrow, Alexi Murdoch, Veenfabriek, Massimo Furlan, Beardyman, Alamo Race Track, Room100, Daniela Swarowsky, Freedom Enterprise, Dario Totorelli, Jonas Vorwerk & Yoren Schriever and many more.
Motel Mozaïque in the press:
Cutting Edge
“While the five local gentlemen of percussion band Convoi Exceptional stand outside waiting for the musical baton to be passed, it soon becomes clear that not everyone fits in the church anymore. After a single song inside the walls, they make their way outside to continue playing energetically, while the transparent church is blown up. The celebration and cheering once this is completed can be described as slightly frenzied. We can only conclude that it was a great start to this eleventh edition of Motel Mozaïque!”
Festivalinfo
“Motel Mozaïque has been a very popular festival for many for a number of years. Folk lovers, beat junkies and indie kids will once again ensure a sold-out edition in 2011. Besides the music, there is much more to experience in Rotterdam this weekend in the form of all kinds of exhibitions and art manifestations. It gives the city, and therefore the festival, a pleasant vibe. The weather also helps with that.”
OOR
“WU LYF has just finished when someone is busy mounting a skull on a pole in the middle of the room. It is Dan Deacon, a corpulent New Yorker with owl glasses who likes to play games with the audience. Think of the kind of exercises that the marketing department of a vacuum cleaner manufacturer does during a weekend of team building. Everyone bends their knees and points to the only one who doesn’t drop, everyone jumps in the same rhythm, everyone waves to the people on the balcony and of course a dance contest. With his enthusiasm and crazy announcements, he has the audience on his side without even a note being sounded. He then pours out a huge amount of electronic pounding music a la Jason Forrest over the audience, with twisted techno, gabber and breakcore.”
De Volkskrant
“Stuart Murdoch climbed over the balconies singing, danced lustfully across the stage and managed to find a clever balance between exuberant clap-along songs such as The Boy With The Arab Strap and veiled, hyper-sensitive songs such as The State I’m In.”
Kindamuzik
“After two days of the festival, the need for responsible music is satisfied. Beardyman is therefore an excellent choice as a closer. The Brit is a human beatboxer, but his performance is not hip hop, but dance. Using a huge load of electronics, Beardyman creates his own floor fillers on the spot. His approach ensures that he is not bound to any genre and he goes from techno to dubstep via semi-covers of ‘Smack My Bitch up’ and ‘Hey Mickey’. Don’t get too serious: it’s Saturday evening and we need to raise our hands. In the meantime, with all that populism, what Beardyman is doing is extremely clever.”
NRC
“The ‘punk kitchen’ served muskrat and garbage soup and overnight festival guests were woken up by women dressed as cotton candy. But the eleventh edition of Motel Mozaique was mainly a success thanks to the great program.”
3voor12
“The organisation can look back on the festival with satisfaction, because 3VOOR12 gave no fewer than five performances a grade of nine or higher. Moreover, we only had to hand out two failing grades. Furthermore, the quality was generally high. Although there were a number of sixes, most bands scored higher than a 7.
With a big 9.5, James Blake is clearly the big winner. The Londoner showed that he could fully live up to the hype surrounding his music. Atze de Vrieze’s conclusion: “You don’t often come across musicians who so emphatically follow their own path and are also so good at it. Very good, in fact.”