Ugur Akkus

I fell in love with quality electronic music when I was 18. The legendary Belgian club La Rocca was my first electronic music experience: I was totally blown away the moment I stepped in and I immediately knew I wanted to be a part of the scene. I started my company Labyrinth Productions, organised events at La Rocca and Café d’Anvers and in 2011 I met the owner of Extrema Holland, which was the biggest festival in Holland at the time. He asked me if we could set up Extrema Outdoor Belgium together. This was a huge opportunity and I wanted to be the first outdoor festival with only underground house and techno. The first three years were hard, but we never lost faith in music and eight years later we have over 50.000 people visiting our festival over the weekend. My other dreams were to run my own club, a festival abroad and have Belgian artists in my agency who would travel the world… All these came true as I opened Labyrinth Club in 2014, had the first edition of Labyrinth Open festival in Croatia last year, and the cherry on my cake, our Belgian pride Amelie Lens, who’s part of our booking agency The Bliss Office, is one of the biggest techno dj in the world.