Dunk! Festival 2023

Four nights of long, slow-burning music in Zottegem, the kind of bills that turn casual listeners into devotees. The 2023 edition leaned into the genre’s wide emotional range, balancing instrumental crescendos and ambient drift on one side with the heavier, doomier corners of the bill on the other. Mono and Caspian held down the headlining post-rock weight, while Amenra brought the room to a hush and Godflesh dragged it back into the dirt. Between the main stages, modern classical and experimental sets from artists like Hauschka and Jozef Van Wissem gave the weekend its quieter centre of gravity. Dunk! has always trusted its audience to sit through patient music, and this edition was a near perfect example of why people drive across the continent for it.