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Ugh so many missed sets so close to me!
Went to Spring Awakening last week, pretty solid music all weekend. Friday was mostly trance stage - Bluestone, MS54 (and a little bit of bluestone & shane 54 since myon wasn't able to make it), Rayel (not bad, but I hear it's pretty much the same set he plays all the time), Cosmic Gate (great set!), and PvD (took 15 minute to set up all his gear lol but then just crushed it 138-140+ non stop). After that caught Eric Prydz (pretty solid), and Zedd closing out the main stage(was my only choice, not a very good set compared to when I saw him at electric forest). After party for Eric Prydz - Dude must have booked it straight to the club because he was playing before I even got there lol. 2 hours of solid prog/techno which luckily drove away a decent amount of the posers filling up the club. After that it was a pure hour of cirez d/pryda amazingness closing out with Liberate.
Saturday I missed most of Lane 8  caught a decent deep house set at the silent disco from a local, Oliver heldens played an enjoyable set, then missed most of Morgan Page trying to get out of the Jack U mainstage cluster fuck (omg that was a horrendous crowd and music), but then Sander van Doorn pleasantly surprised me by coming out pretty hard, much more on the tech/hard side than the Spinnin records garbage I was expecting. Hardwell closed out the night, played a couple decent tracks but mostly garbage, then I got excited when Sun&Moon came on only to be ruined by some poor attempt at a hardstyle drop or something to end his set.
Sunday - Caught the second half of Audien which was a lot of fun, a local DJ played a great Trance set at the silent disco, and then caught a great house set from Dusky and then Jamie Jones. Unfortunately missed Justin Martin who I heard killed it. Tiesto closed out mainstage with probably the worst set I've ever heard from him. Absolutely no set progression, just random popular tunes remixed and the same garbage hits from the past few years. First time I haven't heard him play adagio or silence...Tiesto is officially dead to me.
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Looks like I know where I'm spending some of my vacation this year.
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I'm very much considering going. I'll probably have to just lie to my parents so I don't have to hear them bitch about not going to see them for thanksgiving :p
YES YES YES. Gareth said fuck it and added a bunch of open to close sets instead of just london/LA/NYC
http://garethemery.com/
context and why he's doing all night sets
+ Show Spoiler +So today I was thinking one of the key reasons lots of dance music these days is, well, a bit shit, is not because of cakes or mashups or any of the usual stuff we've come to blame, but because of the way we’ve squeezed down set lengths from the 3+ hours that used to be standard five years ago, to the 1 hour or at the most 90 minutes you tend to get today. You don't get the chance to play non-obvious music in sets that length and most acts (including me from time to time) revert to smashing out the hits.
This is how bad it's got. A few years back, at a European festival, I was sitting in my trailer 15 minutes before my set time when the promoter ran in freaking out and wanting me to start early because the act before me (currently one of the biggest acts in the world) had walked off stage saying “we don’t have any more music”. They were scheduled for 75 minutes, but thought they were only playing an hour, so at dead on 60 minutes, they pressed stop, and fucked off leaving 10,000 fans with silence.
OK, so that's an extreme example, but the fact is when you’re doing a 90 minute peak time set in a club, and the opener ends with a mashup of Calvin Harris, Martin Garrix and Knife Party, that ain’t a good time to build up slow and start your set with Eric Prydz or Hot Since 82. Trust me, I’ve tried. So you end up starting hard and never going back, then looking woefully at your playlist at the end of the night at all the amazing lesser known music you wanted to play but didn’t.
Anyway, I love doing long sets, being able to open for myself, build up a room, doing those few hours of the nights where every track doesn’t need to be a crowd-pleasing slammer, instead choosing delicious, bubbling groove based music that sets the mood for people entering the venue and slowly but surely gets them onto the dancefloor. After all every main course needs an appetizer (unless you’re at McDonalds).
So this year, I’ve been trying to play a little longer when I can, doing all night at the Hollywood Palladium last year, and at for Miami Music Week this year, and both were amazing. I got to do my own warm up, playing music that I’d never usually get to play (but you hear in Electric For Life each week), then my own peak time set, then my own closing set, where I got to bang out the trance including lots of my own classics.
Problem is, a lot of promoters are not really into the idea of longer sets, because they think that fans, particularly in North America, ‘aren’t ready’ or ‘aren’t interested’ in hearing artists play longer.
I disagree. I heard the same shit before I released Drive: “Why are you doing an album man? The album is dead... all people want to hear now is singles: release some singles on Spinnin’ and fuck the album” and I think going with my instincts and making sure Drive got released against the advice of many around me was one of the best decisions I’ve made.
Music should always be more important than marketing.
Anyway this is coming across as a bit negative, which it's not. One thing I have always tried to do is to lead by example, and be the change you want to see, rather than just complain about it on social media, and to have written all this without offering an alternative would have felt somewhat hollow.
So, this week I'm announcing the Electric For Life tour staring in November. On these shows, happily I get to program them myself, so I'll be playing all night, open to close, with amazing production, some live acoustic elements, with music across a whole range of styles, in three of the world’s greatest cites, broadcast live across the world.
What better chance could there be to show the world that we ARE ready? Let’s fucking do this.
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On June 25 2015 02:34 decafchicken wrote:I'm very much considering going. I'll probably have to just lie to my parents so I don't have to hear them bitch about not going to see them for thanksgiving :p YES YES YES. Gareth said fuck it and added a bunch of open to close sets instead of just london/LA/NYC http://garethemery.com/context and why he's doing all night sets + Show Spoiler +So today I was thinking one of the key reasons lots of dance music these days is, well, a bit shit, is not because of cakes or mashups or any of the usual stuff we've come to blame, but because of the way we’ve squeezed down set lengths from the 3+ hours that used to be standard five years ago, to the 1 hour or at the most 90 minutes you tend to get today. You don't get the chance to play non-obvious music in sets that length and most acts (including me from time to time) revert to smashing out the hits.
This is how bad it's got. A few years back, at a European festival, I was sitting in my trailer 15 minutes before my set time when the promoter ran in freaking out and wanting me to start early because the act before me (currently one of the biggest acts in the world) had walked off stage saying “we don’t have any more music”. They were scheduled for 75 minutes, but thought they were only playing an hour, so at dead on 60 minutes, they pressed stop, and fucked off leaving 10,000 fans with silence.
OK, so that's an extreme example, but the fact is when you’re doing a 90 minute peak time set in a club, and the opener ends with a mashup of Calvin Harris, Martin Garrix and Knife Party, that ain’t a good time to build up slow and start your set with Eric Prydz or Hot Since 82. Trust me, I’ve tried. So you end up starting hard and never going back, then looking woefully at your playlist at the end of the night at all the amazing lesser known music you wanted to play but didn’t.
Anyway, I love doing long sets, being able to open for myself, build up a room, doing those few hours of the nights where every track doesn’t need to be a crowd-pleasing slammer, instead choosing delicious, bubbling groove based music that sets the mood for people entering the venue and slowly but surely gets them onto the dancefloor. After all every main course needs an appetizer (unless you’re at McDonalds).
So this year, I’ve been trying to play a little longer when I can, doing all night at the Hollywood Palladium last year, and at for Miami Music Week this year, and both were amazing. I got to do my own warm up, playing music that I’d never usually get to play (but you hear in Electric For Life each week), then my own peak time set, then my own closing set, where I got to bang out the trance including lots of my own classics.
Problem is, a lot of promoters are not really into the idea of longer sets, because they think that fans, particularly in North America, ‘aren’t ready’ or ‘aren’t interested’ in hearing artists play longer.
I disagree. I heard the same shit before I released Drive: “Why are you doing an album man? The album is dead... all people want to hear now is singles: release some singles on Spinnin’ and fuck the album” and I think going with my instincts and making sure Drive got released against the advice of many around me was one of the best decisions I’ve made.
Music should always be more important than marketing.
Anyway this is coming across as a bit negative, which it's not. One thing I have always tried to do is to lead by example, and be the change you want to see, rather than just complain about it on social media, and to have written all this without offering an alternative would have felt somewhat hollow.
So, this week I'm announcing the Electric For Life tour staring in November. On these shows, happily I get to program them myself, so I'll be playing all night, open to close, with amazing production, some live acoustic elements, with music across a whole range of styles, in three of the world’s greatest cites, broadcast live across the world.
What better chance could there be to show the world that we ARE ready? Let’s fucking do this.
All those dates aren't open to close, so how do I know which ones are? I don't really wanna make the trip to Houston for a regular set of Gareth sadly, man I miss the old days of Gareth and Markus.
Sadly I've passed up Markus three times this year so far. Almost brings a tear to my eye that I have, especially when it took almost 2 years for me to be able to catch Markus for the first time.
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I don't trust Insomiac to book anyone that isn't already well known. Plus San Bernandino is so freaking hot, well maybe not so much in November, though it's not like it's super cool. Also it'll still draw the younger crowd who are horrendous and sit in the "cuddle puddles", if that term is even used anymore.
On a brighter side FSOE 400 has a very interesting lineup packed full of 138+ trance. Even though the artist themselves are pretty well known and recycled to a bit.
http://www.eventbrite.com/e/fsoe-400-usa-tickets-16738188372?aff=me
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Paul oakenfold dropped one of the dirtiest sets I've ever seen at electric forest. Came on 15 minute early and opened up with 138 psy trance and never let up. So much underground stuff, I only recognized like two tracks the whole set lol. Really pleasantly surprising. Carl cox, green velvet, and claude von stroke also had some fantastic house/techno sets.
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On June 30 2015 11:13 DukE_ss wrote:Show nested quote +On June 25 2015 02:34 decafchicken wrote:I'm very much considering going. I'll probably have to just lie to my parents so I don't have to hear them bitch about not going to see them for thanksgiving :p YES YES YES. Gareth said fuck it and added a bunch of open to close sets instead of just london/LA/NYC http://garethemery.com/context and why he's doing all night sets + Show Spoiler +So today I was thinking one of the key reasons lots of dance music these days is, well, a bit shit, is not because of cakes or mashups or any of the usual stuff we've come to blame, but because of the way we’ve squeezed down set lengths from the 3+ hours that used to be standard five years ago, to the 1 hour or at the most 90 minutes you tend to get today. You don't get the chance to play non-obvious music in sets that length and most acts (including me from time to time) revert to smashing out the hits.
This is how bad it's got. A few years back, at a European festival, I was sitting in my trailer 15 minutes before my set time when the promoter ran in freaking out and wanting me to start early because the act before me (currently one of the biggest acts in the world) had walked off stage saying “we don’t have any more music”. They were scheduled for 75 minutes, but thought they were only playing an hour, so at dead on 60 minutes, they pressed stop, and fucked off leaving 10,000 fans with silence.
OK, so that's an extreme example, but the fact is when you’re doing a 90 minute peak time set in a club, and the opener ends with a mashup of Calvin Harris, Martin Garrix and Knife Party, that ain’t a good time to build up slow and start your set with Eric Prydz or Hot Since 82. Trust me, I’ve tried. So you end up starting hard and never going back, then looking woefully at your playlist at the end of the night at all the amazing lesser known music you wanted to play but didn’t.
Anyway, I love doing long sets, being able to open for myself, build up a room, doing those few hours of the nights where every track doesn’t need to be a crowd-pleasing slammer, instead choosing delicious, bubbling groove based music that sets the mood for people entering the venue and slowly but surely gets them onto the dancefloor. After all every main course needs an appetizer (unless you’re at McDonalds).
So this year, I’ve been trying to play a little longer when I can, doing all night at the Hollywood Palladium last year, and at for Miami Music Week this year, and both were amazing. I got to do my own warm up, playing music that I’d never usually get to play (but you hear in Electric For Life each week), then my own peak time set, then my own closing set, where I got to bang out the trance including lots of my own classics.
Problem is, a lot of promoters are not really into the idea of longer sets, because they think that fans, particularly in North America, ‘aren’t ready’ or ‘aren’t interested’ in hearing artists play longer.
I disagree. I heard the same shit before I released Drive: “Why are you doing an album man? The album is dead... all people want to hear now is singles: release some singles on Spinnin’ and fuck the album” and I think going with my instincts and making sure Drive got released against the advice of many around me was one of the best decisions I’ve made.
Music should always be more important than marketing.
Anyway this is coming across as a bit negative, which it's not. One thing I have always tried to do is to lead by example, and be the change you want to see, rather than just complain about it on social media, and to have written all this without offering an alternative would have felt somewhat hollow.
So, this week I'm announcing the Electric For Life tour staring in November. On these shows, happily I get to program them myself, so I'll be playing all night, open to close, with amazing production, some live acoustic elements, with music across a whole range of styles, in three of the world’s greatest cites, broadcast live across the world.
What better chance could there be to show the world that we ARE ready? Let’s fucking do this. All those dates aren't open to close, so how do I know which ones are? I don't really wanna make the trip to Houston for a regular set of Gareth sadly, man I miss the old days of Gareth and Markus. Sadly I've passed up Markus three times this year so far. Almost brings a tear to my eye that I have, especially when it took almost 2 years for me to be able to catch Markus for the first time.
These are the open to close sets:
http://electricfor.life/tour
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On July 02 2015 04:41 decafchicken wrote:Show nested quote +On June 30 2015 11:13 DukE_ss wrote:On June 25 2015 02:34 decafchicken wrote:I'm very much considering going. I'll probably have to just lie to my parents so I don't have to hear them bitch about not going to see them for thanksgiving :p YES YES YES. Gareth said fuck it and added a bunch of open to close sets instead of just london/LA/NYC http://garethemery.com/context and why he's doing all night sets + Show Spoiler +So today I was thinking one of the key reasons lots of dance music these days is, well, a bit shit, is not because of cakes or mashups or any of the usual stuff we've come to blame, but because of the way we’ve squeezed down set lengths from the 3+ hours that used to be standard five years ago, to the 1 hour or at the most 90 minutes you tend to get today. You don't get the chance to play non-obvious music in sets that length and most acts (including me from time to time) revert to smashing out the hits.
This is how bad it's got. A few years back, at a European festival, I was sitting in my trailer 15 minutes before my set time when the promoter ran in freaking out and wanting me to start early because the act before me (currently one of the biggest acts in the world) had walked off stage saying “we don’t have any more music”. They were scheduled for 75 minutes, but thought they were only playing an hour, so at dead on 60 minutes, they pressed stop, and fucked off leaving 10,000 fans with silence.
OK, so that's an extreme example, but the fact is when you’re doing a 90 minute peak time set in a club, and the opener ends with a mashup of Calvin Harris, Martin Garrix and Knife Party, that ain’t a good time to build up slow and start your set with Eric Prydz or Hot Since 82. Trust me, I’ve tried. So you end up starting hard and never going back, then looking woefully at your playlist at the end of the night at all the amazing lesser known music you wanted to play but didn’t.
Anyway, I love doing long sets, being able to open for myself, build up a room, doing those few hours of the nights where every track doesn’t need to be a crowd-pleasing slammer, instead choosing delicious, bubbling groove based music that sets the mood for people entering the venue and slowly but surely gets them onto the dancefloor. After all every main course needs an appetizer (unless you’re at McDonalds).
So this year, I’ve been trying to play a little longer when I can, doing all night at the Hollywood Palladium last year, and at for Miami Music Week this year, and both were amazing. I got to do my own warm up, playing music that I’d never usually get to play (but you hear in Electric For Life each week), then my own peak time set, then my own closing set, where I got to bang out the trance including lots of my own classics.
Problem is, a lot of promoters are not really into the idea of longer sets, because they think that fans, particularly in North America, ‘aren’t ready’ or ‘aren’t interested’ in hearing artists play longer.
I disagree. I heard the same shit before I released Drive: “Why are you doing an album man? The album is dead... all people want to hear now is singles: release some singles on Spinnin’ and fuck the album” and I think going with my instincts and making sure Drive got released against the advice of many around me was one of the best decisions I’ve made.
Music should always be more important than marketing.
Anyway this is coming across as a bit negative, which it's not. One thing I have always tried to do is to lead by example, and be the change you want to see, rather than just complain about it on social media, and to have written all this without offering an alternative would have felt somewhat hollow.
So, this week I'm announcing the Electric For Life tour staring in November. On these shows, happily I get to program them myself, so I'll be playing all night, open to close, with amazing production, some live acoustic elements, with music across a whole range of styles, in three of the world’s greatest cites, broadcast live across the world.
What better chance could there be to show the world that we ARE ready? Let’s fucking do this. All those dates aren't open to close, so how do I know which ones are? I don't really wanna make the trip to Houston for a regular set of Gareth sadly, man I miss the old days of Gareth and Markus. Sadly I've passed up Markus three times this year so far. Almost brings a tear to my eye that I have, especially when it took almost 2 years for me to be able to catch Markus for the first time. These are the open to close sets: http://electricfor.life/tour
Thank you! Means the ticket I purchased earlier most likely won't go to waste now.  Also I have a feeling that the San Francisco show is going to be special since the show is at 1015 Folsom. Very old school venue.
Additionally can't believe Seattle is getting an extended set. That club is soso and really set up poorly design wise. Also it's only open for 4 hours, at least normally, and 4 hour set isn't really extended. Wonder how the Markus extended set was there though.
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Meh, the club he's playing at in Chicago is horrible. Tiny dance floor, terrible set up, at least 50% of the club is table service, they almost always make headliners play 130-330 (including fucking markus schulz), and always oversold. But they are the club React promotes for so they get all the big names and screw a lot of the other clubs over, especially with the only other club that was big enough to compete closed down (and that place was awesome). At least they mostly stick to house DJs.
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Announcements so far:
A&F
JoC
Standerwick
Allen & Envy
Simon
Kearney
Indecent Noise
Yeah...i might as well book my trip now
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On July 14 2015 23:07 decafchicken wrote:Announcements so far: A&F JoC Standerwick Allen & Envy Simon Kearney Indecent Noise Yeah...i might as well book my trip now
Ha! If you do book, hope you have a good time, though the venue is very meh at least for southern california standards. And the line up isn't that bad but A&F and JoC are being recycled quite a bit lately for trance line ups. The rest I would definitely not mind catching. Simon Patterson has killed it the few times I've seen him.
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Will atkinson, ben nicky, rank 1, and adam ellis all added as well...I don't think I can skip this and call myself a trance fan xD Probably just skip tomorrowworld this year and go to this instead. I'm dying to see Ben Nicky and Adam ellis is one of my favorite djs/producers at the moment. Havent been to much of CA so it'd be a good trip, esp to get out of the midwest winter.
edit: Add simon o shine and orjan to that list.
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Dreamstate sold out before I got home. FML.
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Not gonna lie, it would be kinda crazy for someone like Astrix or Electric Universe to come to DC. The DJ's that managed to play psy really heavily that came to DC are J00F, Christopher Lawrence, and Psymon Patterson of course.
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Where about DC are you at? My parents are in NOVA and I try to ditch them and go clubbing in the city when I visit xD At least DC get's a solid DJ rotation through there. The local trance promotor is really pushing for more psy trance here, I love it.
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On July 24 2015 23:48 decafchicken wrote:
Where about DC are you at? My parents are in NOVA and I try to ditch them and go clubbing in the city when I visit xD At least DC get's a solid DJ rotation through there. The local trance promotor is really pushing for more psy trance here, I love it.
I live in NoVA too lol.
I mean I'm not gonna lie, the trance scene here is definitely not the worst, even if most of DC tends to favor the more progressive artists like Craig Connelly or Ben Gold over someone like Will Atkinson.
The local promoter you're talking about is Phonic right? They just had Orkidea here about 1.5 months ago...
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On July 26 2015 10:03 MorningMusume11 wrote:Show nested quote +On July 24 2015 23:48 decafchicken wrote:
Where about DC are you at? My parents are in NOVA and I try to ditch them and go clubbing in the city when I visit xD At least DC get's a solid DJ rotation through there. The local trance promotor is really pushing for more psy trance here, I love it. I live in NoVA too lol. I mean I'm not gonna lie, the trance scene here is definitely not the worst, even if most of DC tends to favor the more progressive artists like Craig Connelly or Ben Gold over someone like Will Atkinson. The local promoter you're talking about is Phonic right? They just had Orkidea here about 1.5 months ago...
At least Chicago and DC are getting decent trance acts. Austin is very hit and miss a lot of times as far as trance goes. And let's not start about the type of crowd you have to deal with on those nights. Would love to catch more psy trance or Craig/Orkidea/Ben Gold. I've actually missed the few times Ben Gold came around my way and it sucks. Will Atkinson was good when I saw him, though I didn't appreciate it more at that time.
Overall I can't complain that much, as there is almost always a DJ coming through at least once a month that peaks my interest, whether that is house/tech/trance. It's an LA, man do I miss LA, but it gives me quite a variety that I wouldn't get in most places even LA. Plus if I really want to I can drive to Dallas and Houston...hell even San Antonio is able to pull in some worthwhile gigs.
There are definitely parts of the US that struggle to pull any worthwhile gigs and I don't know what I would do if that were me. My car stereo can only take me so far, though it helps supplement a lot.
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EPT
