Electric Daisy Carnival

EDC Night 2: A 15-year reflection on the ever-changing sound and spectacle

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The nightly fireworks are seen from the Kinetic Field stage during the 2015 Electric Daisy Carnival on Saturday, June 20, 2015, at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
Photo: Yasmina Chavez / Special to the Sun

As I watched Las Vegas producer/DJ 3LAU inside the giant, hangar-like Circuit Grounds stage area on Saturday night, I had a flashback to 15 years earlier, in another giant crowd, in a similar structure, watching another producer/DJ. It was at the fourth Electric Daisy Carnival, then held in an agricultural complex in Tulare, a town in the San Joaquin Valley roughly two hours north of Los Angeles. The performer was BT, one of the most popular electronic dance music artists of the time and the night’s de facto headliner. And he performed at the main stage, inside a white shed-tent that, if memory serves, was about a fourth of the length and half of the height of this weekend’s Circuit Grounds (which is only the third-biggest stage area at EDC). That year, attendance hit some 30,000 people, reportedly the largest electronic music event the U.S. had ever seen.

From what I could tell, there were 30,000 people just at Circuit Grounds last night when Justin Blau unleashed his sonic pastiche of EDM bangers, as the back of the arched structure overflowed with excited onlookers and the interior swelled with sweaty, half-naked bodies. It was a fantastic showing for the rapidly ascending artist, the lone local picked to play EDC’s eight principal stages this weekend. But I reflected less on how far Blau and Las Vegas DJs have come in 15 years than how EDC has evolved—or devolved, depending on who you ask—in the same period of time.

EDC has gone from five to eight official stages (plus the numerous art cars and corporate-sponsored hangouts with their own DJs), one Ferris wheel to four and 35 DJ acts on the poster to nearly 200. There are 13 times the attendees now than then. And the festival has moved from remote SoCal venues not known for music events to one of Los Angeles’ largest football stadiums to a relatively remote Las Vegas venue not known for music events.

2015 EDC: Night 2

Those are just physical changes, though. In my opinion, the art installations have transformed the festival even more than the fantastical stage design. You cannot deny the influence of Burning Man on EDC; an entire, propane-powered section of the Speedway called Porto Arbori evoked the weeklong Northern Nevada event, thanks to fire-blasting sculptures (two made by the Vegas-based Boko Fine Art collective) and El Pulpo Mecanico art car. The attendance has opened up massively, from exceedingly friendly, electronic music-loving geeks in oversized tees and pants to a cross-section of occasionally friendly, 20-something America wearing next to nothing. Less people actually dance than they used to, save for maybe the Neon Garden house/techno tent and the new groove/disco FunkHouse encampment. Most DJs these days are cheered on, not danced to, fans shuffling in place until a hit is dropped, cueing jump-alongs and sing-alongs.

That brings us to the music, which has also dramatically shifted—and hasn’t.

In 2000, trance music seemed to resonate most with Southern California ravers going to large events put on by promoters like Insomniac, and this bore out when BT and Christopher Lawrence drew the largest crowds at EDC that year. Last night, trance mainstay Above & Beyond packed the enormous Kinetic Field main-stage area, dominating EDC-related tweets as it performed (a guest appearance in the DJ booth by Breaking Bad actor Bryan Cranston helped, of course), but the genre mostly lives on in its enduring inspiration to commercial EDM. You could hear the climax-stoking drum rolls, skyward choruses and lyrical hyperbole in sets yesterday from 3LAU and Thomas Gold—whose consecutive Circuit Grounds sets both contained Galantis’ serotonin-dumping smash “Runaway (U & I)”—and Avicii. (You could even hear various DJs playing Alice Deejay’s trance chestnut “Better Off Alone,” still—and distressingly—ubiquitous a decade and a half on.)

The rumbling BassPod stage area mostly showcased the slower-tempoed dubstep this weekend, but once in awhile, acts like Ed Rush and Optical would unleash the hyper-breaks of drum ’n’ bass upon both fans and curious onlookers—a throwback to EDC 2000 when my friends and I took in our first-ever d-n-b set, performed by Dieselboy (who closed BassPod and Friday night’s party on the Speedway). At the bass-themed stage where he performed at EDC 2000, you only heard scant hip-hop influences, especially if an MC appeared. But 15 years later, rap has crashed the EDM party as trap music, which also informed the BassPod soundtrack. DJs didn’t even need the trap template to play straight-up hip-hop, evidenced in how many times I heard O.T. Genasis’ mind-numbingly stupid hit, “I’m in Love with the Coco.”

Festival goers watch Black Sun Empire B2B State of Mind play the last set of day two at the Basspod stage at the 2015 Electric Daisy Carnival at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway Sunday morning June 21, 2015.

Festival goers watch Black Sun Empire B2B State of Mind play the last set of day two at the Basspod stage at the 2015 Electric Daisy Carnival at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway Sunday morning June 21, 2015.

House music has become far less buoyant over the years. In 2000, we grooved to the flamboyant funk of DJ Dan, arguably the most popular house DJ back then—certainly popular enough to earn main-stage placement that year. That foundational dance-music style has since been ghettoized to the Neon Garden stage—Duke Dumont’s moderately attended and politely received live set at Cosmic Meadow notwithstanding—and often shows more of the genre’s European mutations than its American roots. Thankfully, the FunkHouse offered younger attendees an education in the roots of dance music, though for me, it sounded too much like a wedding every time I entered it, given over-familiar fare like the Trammps’ “Disco Inferno” or Black Box’s “Everybody Everybody.”

The easy summation of all that would be that for the first time, I felt a little old to be at EDC. I wasn’t a part of anyone’s raver squad, or digging Avicii’s new material, or enjoying any of the 20-odd carnival attractions despite my love of thrill rides. I was observing and listening to music that mostly put me off or failed to reverberate with me (even if it physically reverberated my innards). Even when Sasha, my favorite all-time DJ, performed on Friday, I only listlessly danced along, dismayed that traffic had made him 45 minutes late—EDC must only helicopter over the commercial EDM big-shots—and knowing once he’d finish sonically warming up, he’d have to leave the booth for Loco Dice.

The stages so strictly adhere to genres that it inhibits, if not prevents the anything-goes possibility that used to come with non-commercial DJ sets. You hear that anything goes at EDC, but they’re talking about anatomy-revealing outfits, not the music. Insomniac bristles at being called a music festival, but as long as it books some 200 DJs, EDC remains a music festival, and as such, its repetitive booking methods are as tired as I am on the Speedway at 3 a.m. For the event to evolve, its approach to music programming must be overhauled to not mimic Strip nightlife during [enter any holiday weekend here].

All that said, as an observer, a dull moment never arrives. There’s nothing like finding an elevated part of the Speedway—the Gate 1 entrance bridge, the second floor of the reimagined midway now called Carnival Square, a Ferris wheel—and taking in the dazzling enormity of it. Fireworks regularly punctuate DJ sets, and the nightly 1 a.m. extravaganza shames New Year’s Eve on the Strip. Eye candy abounds, from the attendee costumes to the Alice in Wonderland-inspired chill-out zone to the Buddha Garden to the astoundingly detailed Kinetic Field and WasteLand stage areas, the latter marvels of music-festival construction.

EDC remains the greatest production one can witness in the Las Vegas Valley. It has come a long way from its considerably more modest presentation in Tulare all those years ago, though you can still see (and hear) traces of its former self here and there. Upon posting a photo of Kinetic Field to my Instagram and Twitter accounts, my childhood friend Dave—my EDC buddy 15 years ago—chimed in with a comment: “Taking me back ... waaaaaay back.” I nearly replied: “You have no idea.”

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