The PLX festival on Swedish island Tjärö returned from the grave this year – much like Kune, on a completely different, and Danish, island. This year we didn’t feature the festival, which occurred in August. But I did take some photos with my analogue camera, so I thought I’d share a short photo essay with some memories. Because, as always, it was a very memorable experience.
One of the personal highlights for me this year was that my dear friend 55 Cancri e played the festival. It was the first time that I’d attended on the Thursday and spent all four days on the island, which offered immaculate weather this year.
As usual there were many artists on the line-up that I didn’t really know so well. For example Swedish psytrance producer Eternal Wonder, who played a DJ set with only originals. It wasn’t exactly the type of psy that interests me, but his energy was so infectious and he played in broad daylight, which made the whole thing even more hilarious.
Arguably the biggest name this year was Fennesz, who had also played in Sweden a couple of years ago. He played on the revamped and relocated stage Klippan, a few metres from the sea. That was not the only change for 2025, there was also a new stage for the daytime DJs called Hagen – which was where Eternal Wonder played actually.
Resident band Yunton Beach did an excellent set as well, even if the setting wasn’t quite as impressive as some of their legendary shows at past iterations of the festival. The leafy Dungen stage also offered DJ sets from people like London-based Amaliah and live music from the amazing South African group BCUC.
As usual, Satelliten was the place for sweaty late night DJ sets, even though the set times were keeps very secret. This was where the big names like DJ Pete, Budino and Mad Miran took to the DJ booth. Walking back to the camp in the morning sun is always my favourite part of the festival.
Some of the pleasant surprises were the Copenhagen duo Bremer McCoy who played a dreamy set early evening set to an audience that was sitting or lying down, really getting into vibe these two guys were creating on stage.
I also really enjoyed the set by Okaro, though I beat myself up over missing her live show (only cause I walked away due to the massive delay and came back 20 minutes later only to find it over and done). And of course seeing Vilde Tuv play to such a large audience was heartwarming.
I don’t have any pictures of it, because it was so dark and the strobe lights would have messed it up – but my absolute favourite artist as the whole festival was Tuce Alba. Mainly because I had just seen her play the month before in Berlin to a tiny crowd. And hearing a noise set at such an incredible volume and this beautiful setting was enough to make anyone cry. She only played for 20 minutes but later told me that it happened inadvertently because she didn’t have her phone and thought she has played much longer. Well, the brevity only made it sweeter I think. Don’t miss her in Copenhagen, where she’s playing live next month, I believe.
Huge thanks as always to the PLX crew for organising such a legendary event. I hope you check out some of these artists even if I haven’t fleshed out the text with more details of how they sounded, their releases and so on. You’ll just have to take the bookers of PLX’s word for it. You won’t regret it.
Finishing off with the best view from any festival I’ve been too. The magical sunset moment that happens each year actually took place just half an hour after I took this.
