Electric Daisy Carnival 2014

Electric Daisy Carnival 2014: Musical observations from Night 1

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Carl Cox performs during the first night of the Electric Daisy Carnival early Saturday, June 21, 2014 at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
Photo: Sam Morris

1. In my six years of EDC—four in Las Vegas and two in California—I’ve never been more musically unsatisfied than I was during the first night of this year’s EDC. Chalk it up to either lazy, timid or frugal programming. A few exceptions aside, the three largest stations were programmed like a Strip megaclub, names like Diplo, Steve Aoki, Afrojack and Steve Angello representing the glucose wasteland that has become mainstream EDM. And the bookings at the more genre-specific stages largely mirrored those of EDC’s recent past. If you don’t get out very much, EDC might be a gold mine. But if you’ve amassed any experience with public dance floors and other music festivals, Friday’s offerings had the vitality of a hospice.

2014 EDC: Night One

2. Live music isn’t very welcome at EDC despite memorable performances in the past from Plastikman, Röyksopp and Empire of the Sun. This year, Booka Shade was the one act with an actual rig to cart out, and it largely delivered. Though I’m a big house guy, I’ve noticed increased rigidity within the so called “deep” scene, many of its big players booked on the very Neon Garden stage on which Booka Shade performed. But the German electronic act found ways to stretch and bend the house/tech aesthetic, mostly through grooves and flourishes that added to the narrative of each song. Similarly, the organic pulse coming from drummer Arno Kammermeier infused the set with some added dimension.

3. In an attempt to vary up the soundtrack of the Kinetic Field main stage area—one of the few careful considerations being made with regards to music programming—Insomniac has placed non-EDM/trance DJs in front of what is usually the fest’s largest audience, and last night LA’s The Glitch Mob found itself following the night’s first big fireworks 'n' production display. An amalgamation of sounds filled the temporary arena, including guitar riffs, hard piano notes, frenetic keyboard arpeggios and—gasp!—breakbeats, a notable deviation from the usual Kinetic four-on-the-floor stomp. The trio sounded as accessible as it ever has—this could have been what’s known as a “festival” set—but the change-up was welcome and left one anticipating where the set would go next.

4. Preceding the Glitch Mob was Vegas’ own 3lau (pronounced “Blau”), the first local to ever land main-stage placement at EDC. He took advantage of the opportunity with a high-energy set that ably warmed up a pre-dusk crowd that was largely seeing its first act of the weekend, kids already sweating after a few pogo-provoking numbers (to say nothing of the performer’s own calisthenics). The mash-friendly 3lau played it very safe, though, and even cheesed it up by slipping in an a capella portion of Blink-182's “All the Small Things” and the Bingo Players’ grating interpretation of Brenda Russell’s 1988 hit, “Piano in the Dark.” Alas, the crowd sang along to every word.

5. Over at the appropriately named Basspod stage—though the Basscon stage was a bit of a misnomer—Camo and Krooked felt like a breath of fresh air (the allergy-triggering kick-up of dust notwithstanding) with its open-format but hardly mainstream treatment of the bass-music genre. It mercifully focused less on the dramatic drops and wubs—the now-tiresome trademarks of American dubstep—and hewed closer to jungle, including drum 'n' bass breakaways that sounded as refreshing as they did thrilling. When the twosome did dare a drop, the song gave way to something more sophisticated or subtle—and definitely unexpected. Add the forays into other electronic music genres and you had a set with more depth than you’d expect at an EDC niche stage.

6. Two casual trips around the expansive festival layout did not reward the ears, even when leaning in closer to the art cars, where I expected to hear sounds that differed from the other stages but usually didn’t. And about that long-running EDC problem with performers playing the same hits—how are DJs still playing Zombie Nation’s 1999 stadium-disco hit, “Kernkraft 400”? Both Dyro & Dannic and Hardwell—the latter being world’s No. 1 DJ, apparently—both slipped it into their sets, and shame on them for the indulgence.

7. As Insomniac Events founder Pasquale Rotella has been repeating like a unrelenting drum-machine loop, it’s not about the music—or, according to what he told the Weekly, it’s 20 percent of the EDC equation. I’d gauge it more at, oh, five percent. At any rate, it certainly felt like an afterthought on Friday. Let’s hope more curveballs and genuine discoveries surface tonight and tomorrow.

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