Music

This Transylvanian music festival trades blood for tickets

by Jeremy Mersereau

The Untold electronic music festival takes place July 30-August 2 across 20 venues in the Romanian city and unofficial capital of Transylvania, Cluj-Napoca. With big-ticket names like Aviici, David Guetta, and EDM superstars The Wu-Tang Clan (love their MDMA anthem “I Can’t Go to Sleep”), it’s no surprise that fans are clamouring for tickets.

Fortunately for prospective festivalgoers, they can get a 30% discount off ticket price, and all it will cost them is some of that precious vermilion elixir of life, mwah ha ha ha. I’m talking about blood, sorry. I should have been more clear.

The idea to discount admission to blood donors came to festival organizers after looking at Romania’s statistics, during which they discovered that only 1.7% of the population are active blood donors and regularly visit the country’s 42 donation centres, which ranks them second-last in Europe. Organizers decided to launch the Pay With Blood program in order to motivate youth to donate their precious life liquid, which will promptly be funnelled into the catacombs through a complex sluice system right into the waiting maw of the vampire gods used to aid those in need of transfusions.

“Given that Romania faces an acute blood shortage in medical facilities, a campaign that takes inspiration from these myths in order to draw attention to a real problem is more than welcome,” Bogdan Buta, director general of the festival, told the Guardian. Nice cover, Bogdan! We all know that’s just what a ravenous beast of the night would say.

Hopefully this plan doesn’t backfire right in organizers faces: Vampires are widely-known to love dance beats and a whole EDM event full of fresh-faced, blood-full music lovers would be like advertising a grease festival to a group of Guy Fieris.

As a public service, we’ve put together this handy vampire identification guide so you and your loved ones can remain safe and un-drained should you decide to attend Untold:

– Vampires love wearing black, possibly due to the colour’s oft-rumoured connection to fear.

– Vampires are often quite sexy. Don’t be fooled, their true form is anything but, unless Billy Corgan really does it for you.

– Vampires are widely rumoured to be averse to daylight, so just ask everyone you meet to join you for a Denny’s Grand Slam at 9 a.m. the next morning and see if they acquiesce. If not, definite Nosferatu.

– If all else fails, beg and plead to be turned into a familiar. Worked for me. ‘Scuse me, Mistress Sanguine is calling. I gotta go book her a plane ticket to Romania or something. I swear, it never ends with her!