As Electric Daisy Carnival celebrated 20 years of bringing fans of dance music together "under the electric sky,” allusions to both its rich past and promising future abounded both within the festival and throughout the lineup. Featuring trailblazers, tastemakers and talented hopefuls, the famed summer festival offered a musical lineup as eclectic as the fans who make the annual trek to the Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
Making the rounds through the eccentrically themed stages, colorful festivalgoers and roving art carts—many boasting their own DJ lineups—I split my time between various 90-minute DJ sets. Among the highlights …
Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaur When Orlando Higginbottom chose the stage name Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaur, he sought something that lacked pretentiousness and just sounded fun, which is exactly the mood the 30-year-old British DJ brought to his Neon Garden set. Featuring high-energy house tracks like Solardo’s “Acid Jump” and Mele's tribal-infused “Ambience,” TEED kept bodies at the techno/house stage moving throughout his set.
Armand Van Helden A dance music legend, Van Helden dished out a set as fun and funky as it was nostalgic. With classics like Cassius’ “1999,” Nightcrawlers’ “Push the Feeling On,” Hardrive’s “Deep Inside” and his own originals (“The Funk Phenomena”) and remixes (Sneaker Pimps’ “Spin Spin Sugar”), the 46-year-old shared an overview of both his DJ career and some of the best club music of the past few decades. Onlookers at the Upside Down House stage moved, shook and even sung along accordingly, most notably when Van Helden transitioned into Robin S’ 1993 iconic hit, “Show Me Love.” And speaking of which …
Robin S It’s been more than 25 years since her house anthem first took over dancefloors and it’s still as popular—and widely remixed—as ever. Which made the diva a natural for a surprise performance during one of the EDC20 tributes at the Kinetic Field main stage. “Yes, it’s me!” she exclaimed as she appeared after the song’s instantly recognizable keyboard intro began, and proceeded to belt out every note with as much soulfulness and precision as she did in the original recording.
Axwell & Ingrosso Curating a Kinetic Field set that spanned their careers—as solo performers, as two-thirds of supergroup trio Swedish House Mafia and as a recently formed duo—the Swedish EDM megastars essentially treated the crowd to a greatest-hits performance, from SHM classics “Antidote,” “Don’t You Worry Child” and “Greyhound,” to recent releases “Something New” and “Can’t Hold Us Down,” to their new, individually crafted tunes (Ingrosso’s “Dark River,” Axwell’s “Barricade”). The set even featured nods to Ingrosso’s protege Alesso by playing the latter’s collaboration with Calvin Harris, “Under Control,” and his remix of One Republic’s “Lose Myself.” The 90-minute set was complemented by crowd sing-alongs, the stage’s LED light show, fire and water displays, massive bass drops and fireworks shot on cue.
Tycho Closing out the festival at the grassy Cosmic Meadow stage, producer/DJ Scott Hansen serenaded the remaining crowd with his ambient, downtempo sounds. With chillwave tracks such as Throwing Snow’s “As You Fall” and Boards of Canada’s “Olson,” Tycho’s set was certainly a change of pace from the thumping beats and high-energy bangers that dominated the night, and a welcome one at that. The audience began to unwind as a painted desert sunrise emerged, the first stage of what would likely be a restful day in preparation for tonight’s EDC finale.