EDC 2010 Review – Saturday

EDC 2010 Saturday
Photo Credit: Drew "Rukes" Ressler @ insomniacevents.com

I woke up Saturday with my legs extremely sore from barely sitting down on Friday. But that was in the past. Friday was over (Friday review here). It was time to head to EDC Saturday. And in the morning I logged onto their website to find out the whole thing was sold out! It was going to somehow be even MORE crowded than the night before (although, ultimately, I couldn’t tell the difference). I got my gear in tow and met up with my crew to head over to the festival for another night of epic dance music.

I won’t go through the motions again but let’s just say we barely had to wait in line and got in very quickly. If you read my Friday review, you know what’s up.

Kinetic Field

Well, we decided we wouldn’t make the same mistake as the day before. Once we got onto the grounds at 5 PM, we headed straight down to the main coliseum floor before the whole thing was closed off. In order to get down there, you have to wait in “line” at the gate. And by wait in line I mean go into a zoo of people and get nearly trampled on your way through; a-la the entrance to a slaughterhouse. My girlfriend and I barely survived and made it down there at 5:30 to catch the banging beats of Afrojack.

Afrojack and Chuckie, both of whom play the new “Dirty Dutch” sound, along with Dada Life, got to play both nights. On Friday Chuckie took the Coliseum while Dada Life and Afrojack were at the other main stage (Circuit Grounds) while on Saturday they switched. I was disappointed that I missed Dada Life but there was no way I was going to be at EDC from 4 PM to 2 AM, although I’m sure many people did exactly that (and more).

Long story short, I found Afrojack’s set to have some good likeable tunes but also a lot of same-ness to it. And by sameness I mean various manipulations of basically the same sound – a chopped up bleep going up and down in crescendos (see video above for example; one of the better opinions in my opinion). Luckily, a good friend stopped by. His name? Lil Jon. He got on the mic toward the end of Afrojack’s set and basically become the MC for the night at the Kinetic Field… more on how that happened later.

Lil Jon EDC 2010 Photo Credit: Drew "Rukes" Ressler @ insomniacevents.com

After Afrojack wrapped up, Will.I.Am came on. I didn’t really know what to expect from him but I did listen to his set from Ultra Festival in Miami and that was basically a mish-mash of electro and pop songs; pretty high energy but pretty random. I thought maybe after a few months he had gotten some practice in and his sets had improved. Boy was I wrong.

EDC 2010 Kinetic Field – welcome to the Will.I.Am Pandora Station! Each track will be played for approximately 2 minutes, just enough for you to start singing along but not enough for you to enjoy it. Also songs will be interrupted with random rapping and constant reminders of the fact  that will.i.am is from East LA (but somehow went to Palisades High). I was not happy with Will.I.Am’s set and neither were most people around me, to be honest. 2 things, however, made it interesting.

Thing #1: I couldn’t leave

The main Coliseum stage was closed off at about 6:15, even earlier than the night before. No coming in and out. And better yet: no bathrooms. My group decided that we were going to try to stay down there the whole night, until 2 AM, without going to the bathroom once. “Hmm, interesting” I said, but internally I knew it would only be a matter of time before my bladder failed me. I decided to hold out as long as I could.

Holding out as long as I could meant staying through the entirety of Will.I.Am’s set. Again, I must re-iterate: it was not very good at all.

Thing #2: People hopping the fences

At one point during Will.I.Am’s set, everyone started looking toward the back of the Coliseum. Was there a glowing stilt walking furry moose back there for everyone to enjoy? Nope. It was a multitude of ravers literally stampeding the side exists (exit only from the main area, not an entrance) to get onto the main floor which, like I said, had been closed off a while ago. The news chopper caught a pretty solid view of what happened:

From where I was standing, it didn’t look that scary, but I’m sure to the people nearby as well as security it wasn’t a pretty sight. I have to admit, it is disappointing but not surprising to see activity like this. Almost every massive I go to in LA there is some instance of gate storming and people hopping fences to get their fun. Usually security is on top of it but in this case it got out of hand. I will speak more to this later but my recommendation is raising the minimum age for these events. That may not eliminate the problem completely but it sure will mitigate it.

Will.I.Am had to stop his set a few times to tell people to stop climbing the gates. Even though he wasn’t that great, I still feel bad for the guy. Having to stop your set always sucks. Will.I.Am did a pretty good job at telling people to stop; he kept the party atmosphere in good spirits and told those climbing over the wall that it’s a privilege to be at an event like this (true) and they shouldn’t ruin it for everyone else (true).

Eventually his set ended and Laidback Luke came on.

I’m not going to lie, Laidback Luke was awesome. He was not only awesome just because, buthe was even more awesome because he was following Will.I.Am who sucked. He started things off with “Where’s Your Head At” and played a lot of intense house tracks with a lot of familiar vocals and tunes strewn in throughout. His set, unfortunately, also had to be stopped because of the gate crashers. This time, Lil Jon got on the mic. What he said, in my opinion, was hilarious in its vulgarity and simplicity. He got the message across. After this, there were no more problems. Warning: adult language in following video. Lol.

After a fantastic set from Laidback Luke, nature’s call got the best of me and I had to leave the main stage to use the restroom. I wasn’t too disappointed because I wanted to go explore anyway, wasn’t too excited for Benny Bennassi, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to hold it all night. So we left.

Exploring

After using the bathroom, we walked around and checked out some of the art sculptures at EDC. My impression: WTF. How do people come up with this stuff? I mean, there is a fairly simple explanation for Cubatron L5. Ok. Pretty lights. I get it. But a snake with fire blasting out of its spine? Pretty cool but also trippy as hell. Other art installations included some sort of steam punk carriage (with blasting fire), tall sculptures made of some sort of wire (which also blasted fire and had acrobats swinging off of them), and plenty of glowing things everywhere. Fire and glowing. Awesome.

Next we hit up the trance stage (I had to stop by for at least a bit) at the Neon Garden. I was disappointed that I missed Gareth Emery’s set but I wanted to check out Christopher Lawrence having never seen him before. We stayed for a total of 15 minutes. The music was some sort of really hard, intense trance with barely any breakdowns. There was no time to rest! The guy was just pounding the crowd with massive beats. Furthermore, the side-stages seemed to have the music up way louder because my ears were in pain even with my earplugs in. I left Lawrence – the time was 10:15 and Above and Beyond was about to take over back at the Kinetic Field.

Kinetic Field Pt. 2

We came in through the side and the Coliseum was packed to the brim, although the main floor was a bit less packed (apparently other people had to use the bathroom too… weird). There weren’t many empty seats but we found a spot just to catch Bennassi playing his remix of Red Hot Chili Pepper’s Californication. A Cali favorite that he exploited last year at EDC as well. If it it works, it works, right? Thanks to KROQ, every LA resident MUST love RHCP or else…

Above and Beyond finally took over after Benny wrapped up. Lil Jon made his last “YAYUHHH” and he was done too, basically having MC’ed the main stage the whole time after his “Mothaf@#%in” announcement. I say bring him back next year!!!

The whole place got quiet. Things got relaxed, mellow, melodic, and my LA night at EDC was just getting started. Ahh… the soothing sounds of trance. I was expecting a good set because of multiple interviews in which Above and Beyond said EDC 2007 was their best gig of that year (and, coincidentally, my first EDC). They certainly delivered again this year.

Above and Beyond played their usual fare – uplifting progressive house built up into uplifting epic trance. Nothing new and yet more of the same was exactly what I wanted. Some of the tunes they played – “On a Good Metropolis Day”, “Home”, “Love Comes Again” were trance anthems which got everyone pumped and singing along while others such as “100″ by Wippenberg, Rank1, and Nic Chagall, and Armin’s “Not Going Home” were just meant to be heard on a massive sound system.

After A&B wrapped up with a couple of classic tunes, the music got quiet and Saturday’s headliner took stage. The #1 DJ in the world – Armin van Buuren.

Armin played an energetic set and pleased me greatly, although just like A&B he didn’t quite throw any curveballs. He played for 2 hours and included some techy favorites of mine such as Humanoid and Aisha, as well as uplifting trance toward the end of course, and some new stuff in the middle. Apparently he played a few tracks off of his new album but because it is not out yet I did not recognize them. I was in “A State of Trance”.

Again, overall exactly what I wanted and expected from Armin. However I could see if you are not a big trance fan or you have seen him a bunch of times how you would expect or want more. I guess that is how I felt when I saw Tiesto at Coachella. The eternal showman, Armin dropped Alex MORPH’s remix of “Broken Tonight” as an encore and then it was all over. Done. Finito. It was time to head back to the mundane lives that we all lead during the day, which do not equate to hundreds of thousands of people jumping to electronic music in the middle of a sports coliseum downtown at one of the biggest cities in the world. *sigh*. Some day my life will matter that much. Until then, keep dancing and keep raving! And most of all, stay safe.

I will write one more post this week regarding safety and my advice for EDC next year.

Thanks for reading the LA Beat Connection!

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