Bear Stone Festival is a riverside utopia where psychedelic music is the common tongue

For one weekend a year, Bear Stone Festival creates a waterside oasis for this collective imagination, where its devotees can headbang between the trees, dive in cold water and find community with like-minded souls. Held in an outlying canyon along the Mrežnica River in central Croatia, entering Bear Stone feels like stumbling across a hidden society in which everyone plays an equal part and where psychedelic music is the common tongue.

About half an hour from the nearest town of Slunj – home to the picturesque village of Rastoke, where waterfalls gently spill between centuries-old houses and mills – the road into Bear Stone snakes along the lush Kordun hills until eventually dropping into the valley. Phone signal vanishes long before the entrance, which, though just a reality of the remote location, seems to encourage leaving the outside world behind.

The first thing that strikes you is the water. Crisp, turquoise, gin-clear water that acts as a path past the campsite, before opening into a broad natural pool at the heart of the festival, a sun trap where people gather and bathe as droney guitars from one of the three stages drift over (there are no clashes here). Hammocks are strewn wherever there’s shade, while dogs – lots of dogs – weave by below.

The sense of escapism extends beyond the landscape, too. Colossal humanoid sculptures and pagoda-like structures are scattered around the Jam Stage. Forgive a moment of overenthusiastic imagination, but the line of market stalls selling records and crafts and CBD teas has a kind of timeless, ancient quality. It might be the slow social ritual of mingling and browsing on the trail, or maybe it’s just the perfumey, herbal smells that fill the air.

Really, the convivial vibe is due in no small part to familiarity. Of the few thousand people who make their way to Bear Stone for this fifth edition, the vast majority are return guests.

“What has surprised us most is the level of dedication and loyalty from our visitors,” says the festival’s founder Marin Lalić. “They've become genuine ambassadors for the festival, spreading the word through social media and personal recommendations because they truly believe in what we're doing. That's one of the hardest things to achieve—to create an experience that resonates so deeply that people naturally want to share it with others.” The scenery may entice first-timers, but it’s the chance to reunite with friends and make new ones who all share a love for these subgenres that brings people back to Bear Stone.

Psych rock might be the lingua franca, but it is one of many dialects. On Thursday evening Portuguese band Travo slap me awake from a beer and sun-soaked slumber with unrelenting heft, guitars wah-wah wailing as the rhythm section somehow finds grooves amid their frenzy. Warm but eerie songs such as “Faceless Ghoul” lead with the hypnotic harmonies that Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats have done so well for a decade and a half, but given how the latter favour an authentic 70s production on record, the weight behind their Friday headline performance comes as a shock. Later that night the Cambridge band hit out at “Pop diva Damon Albarn of the novelty cartoon act Gorillaz” for allegedly cutting their set at Roskilde festival early, and it’s as though their Bear Stone performance is consequently charged with a show and a half’s worth of force. Drummer Jon Rice’s onslaught behind the kit suggests it, anyway.

Other acts conjure altered states by slowing the pace right down. Belgium's black-robed outfit Wyatt E. takes to the stage dressed like the Bene Gesserit and with a sound that certainly puts the doom in Dune. Songs such as “Im Leyla” stretch out with a cinematic quality that seems to emit its own heat haze, and it’s like a spell is broken when their afternoon set draws to a close.

Another masked band is Austin TV, with lilac ribbons spilling out of their eyeholes like Studio Ghibli characters. Their journey from Mexico City adds to the sense of anticipation building before their performance, but in place of the stylised vision their costumes seem to promise is a sincere gutpunch of emotive post-rock. Instrumental with the occasional Spanish-speaking sample, there’s a pleasing contrast of fat-toned bass to raspy guitars as math-rock breakdowns add a bit of pep between atmospheric swells on tracks like “Kokoro”, and a sweetness to “Lo Bonito de la Muerte” that feels palate cleansing after three days of doomy music.

Austin TV is the first of a triple billing on Saturday evening that proves to be one of the weekend’s finest stretches. Elder follow with what must be the loudest set, but make use of the oomph tastefully, with songs like “Capture/Release” from latest album Through Zero emerging from the proggy fog with all-out fuzz and mind-melting shredding. “Forcing open the gate of the mind,” sings Nick DiSalvo on the album’s title track as a projection of the festival’s mascot bear looks down from a nearby rockface, “Shoulder to shoulder align / Separate only by time”. It feels like the climax and perfectly captures the guiding force of the festival’s curation; is there a feeling of uncertainty, then, as Altin Gün prepare for the final set on the main Stone Stage?

Where Elder soar to cosmic heights, headliners Altin Gün pull back into the body and find the psychedelic in the groove. Even the slow, stoned opener “Gönül Dağı” warrants a sway, though they are at their best at their most rhythmic; the Dutch band certainly lean into the brooding pulse of their recent release Garip for this crowd at first, but soon earn the right to drop into the clap-clap disco of “Maçka Yolları” or the Giorgio Moroder-esque “Süpürgesi Yoncadan”. They may be an anomaly on the poster for their lack of heft, but the group’s funky take on Turkish folk provides one of Bear Stone’s most joyous communal moments.

Those wanting to continue the party head back to the Jam Stage for Danish sax trio Smag På Dig Selv, whose hyped up songs sound like they’ve hit tape reverse on a Scandi EDM banger to reveal garbled, satanic incantations.

What next, then, for a festival whose idyllic setting is as much a part of its character as the music, but naturally only leaves so much space to grow? “We've positioned Bear Stone as a niche festival with a carefully curated musical identity, and we're proud that it has gained international recognition so quickly,” says Lalić. “Growth doesn't have to mean getting bigger. We'd rather keep improving the quality of the experience and strengthen our reputation. Hearing people describe Bear Stone as ‘the best festival of its kind’ is the strongest sign that we're on the right track.”

For all of the world-building that gives psych, desert and stoner rock their escapist pleasure, Bear Stone offers a gathering place born from the same vision – and a paradise at that.