UNTOLD

Written By Shane Price

After a massive weekend at Tomorrowland and having a huge expectation for the next Festival, I got myself into Cluj for the Untold Festival.Getting a not so warm welcome at the airport with customs once you say you are in for Untold we were on. $6 for an Uber to the hotel, which cost us $3000 for the week.

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The hype around this Festival was fucking crazy, and I had zero clue what to expect. Was it going to be as huge as and good as looked on the videos?

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Pre drinks went down and off we went, skipped the line with the VIP tickets and away we go, Untold Festival 2019 baby! The mood was vibrant; people were happy, they free poured your $7 vodkas.  I thought to myself fuck it, this will be a good time!

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We walked around and checked out the stages, the sideshows, the nitty gritty. It was an amazing set up.  Alchemy stage was crazy, Galaxy looked amazing and main stage in the stadium was just out of this world, it was a simple but effective stage and looked even more amazing when the sun went down.

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The locals seemed to have nothing but love for the Festival and it really showed, the all ages event was full with people from 5 to 85.  It creates a different feel, but it also feels great that the environment is different from just a million cooked people.

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It seemed that because this wasn’t “Tomorrowland” and people weren’t on one of the biggest stages their sets were so much more raw, no showing off, no bringing out 8 idiots and stopping their sets 15 times, its was them throwing down their biggest bangers and best shows and it really was off the charts. 

Timmy Trumpets set at Tomorrowland was the most stop start set I’ve seen, which really took away from his previous years, but at Untold, he threw down, a couple of Instagram video parts but all around I think i'll put it as the best set I’ve seen from the Australian rockstar. The entire stadium was alive and I seriously am proud of the guy.

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Armin the GOAT threw down a 7.5 hour set that went through some serious emotions and really shows what kind of dj this man is, it was a pleasure seeing him play at a Festival he seems to have so much love for. Through his trance to his new school music, he took us on a ride and I’ll remember this set to the day I die.

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My set of the weekend has to be Pendulum B2B Friction. The drum and bass feels with a crowd that new the amazing set that was unfolding in front of us made it so enjoyable. I loved dancing away to this it was just perfect. Probably a bit of nostalgia helped this through.

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This Festival was very impressive to see what it had done in just 5 years. But it had its downfalls in some areas. There was a high police and military presence and for myself, walking around a festival to see a person in a full balaclava, sunglasses and a helmet holding a machine gun was unnerving and I feel that it could have been held back in such ways, yet no sniffer dogs or other preventative measure to be seen.

Just big guys holding big guns. The toilet situation was bloody horrible and being in a group of 7 I feel we spent more time waiting for the toilet than anything else, by day 2 the girls realised they could go in the guys toilets without getting in trouble so it was all mayhem.

Finally, there was a fine if you litter. 5000 Ron which is $1800 Aussie dollars, but the presence of bins was little to none in some areas, they could have combatted this like Sziget does and arranged reusable cups.

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Over all, I really liked this festival. Deep down, I really really did.

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But would I go back? I probably wouldn’t.

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This has absolutely nothing to do with the festival itself but to do with things such as accommodation being jacked 4 times higher than other times of the year, the extremely hard time you can have getting in and out of Cluj and quite simply for the price I spent there I could do another Tomorrowland, Creamfields or Ultra.

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I want to thank the people of Romania for the most warm welcome they gave us allowing us to party in their city, the people at all the bars and restaurants around serving us with a smile and all staff in Untold for being down right the most honest and hard-working people to make this thing run smoothly.