What an amazing weekend in East Rutherford, New Jersey for Insomniac Event and Pacha NYC’s Electric Daisy Carnival New York City! The weather could not have been better and with some of the biggest names in the game in town for the weekend some incredible performances took place. Pictured above is the Everything Looks Brighter crew that was in attendance for EDC on Saturday and Sunday (pictured from left to right: Alexa, Miranda, Brittney, Alex, Myself [Mikey], Mat and Anna). First and foremost big shout-out to both Pacha NYC and Insomniac Events for putting on a flawless event here, real top notch quality production which is to be expected from those two. Now in this post I am gonna give you a recap of the event with some videos I took of the DJs I saw over the weekend and some of the highlights of each of their sets along with this I am also gonna be giving each of the performers a review and maybe a little grade and at the end I will let you guys know who I think put on the best performance this weekend and also some must have tracks from the event. Remember these are the DJs I decided to see so don’t expect a review of every single performer at the event I saw who I wanted to see and did my best to take notes on them so I could write a good recap. A little forewarning I may go on little rants here and there and maybe sound insulting at points but I am just being truthful and trying to write the best and most honest review I can so don’t take anything to seriously. Now that we got the intro out of the way let’s get to it!
SATURDAY
Junior Sanchez
Junior was the first performer I caught on Saturday after arriving a little late and missing Tim Mason (which I was not happy about). On that note, why was Tim Mason playing first anyway and only for one hour? I think Tim deserved a way better spot and at least an hour and a half. Anyway I was pleasantly surprised by Junior Sanchez’s performance, not to say I am not a fan of him or had any doubts in his abilities as a producer or DJ just that I didn’t know exactly what to expect. He played some pretty sweet bootlegs, one in particular I wish I had gotten a video of included The Beastie Boy’s ‘No Sleep Till Brooklyn’ and was a definite crowd pleaser. He went on to play some tracks that I heard a lot this weekend like Afrojack’s edit of ‘Sending My Love’ and Axwell’s Mix of ‘In My Mind’. He also brought up CeCe Peniston to do live vocals on a couple of tracks which I always enjoy but I think a lot of people were confused by it. Just a lack of knowledge of who she is or why she was up there with him but all people had to do was read the set listings! To wrap up I gotta say I thoroughly enjoyed Junior’s performance and I think he did a great job of setting the bar high at the Cosmic Meadows stage for the rest of the day and also getting the crowd into it. Below is a video of him dropping Axwell’s mix of Ivan Gough & Feenixpawl Feat. Georgi Kay ‘In My Mind’.
AN21 & Max Vangeli
Following Junior Sanchez at the Cosmic Meadows stage were the dynamic duo of AN21 and Max Vangeli. I was very excited to see these two in action and they were definitely among my most anticipated performances of the weekend. This was my first time seeing these two live and they lived up to all the hype I have heard about them. They brought of course some of their classic remixes in their set like ‘Save the World’ and their ever popular remix of Pendulum’s ‘The Island’ which was played a great deal over the weekend. They also brought some of their originals whether on there own or in some form as a bootleg, remix or acapella track I heard ‘Swedish Beauty’, ‘Gama’, and ‘Whisper’. One of my favorite tracks from their set and also one of the biggest tracks so far this year was ‘Trio’ by Arty, Matisse and Sadko real glad they decided to stick this one in their set and was surprised I didn’t hear more people breaking it out. I snagged a video of them dropping it which is below. The big track from this set though is their upcoming track with Tiesto ‘People of the Night’ which I have been patiently waiting for quite some time now (a year and a half?). I managed to snag a video of it which is posted below, hopefully we will see this track released in time for summer! AN21 and Vangeli also played some tracks to support their labelmates on Size Matters like Tim Mason and of course the big boss Steve Angello. I’ll definitely be looking to see these guys again soon maybe for a longer set though cause I would love to hear them go deep into their set and see what they can come up with! The videos below are ‘Trio’ first then ‘People of the Night’.
Cazzette
Next up I moved outside of the stadium over to the main stage, Kinetic Fields, for the boys of Cazzette. I didn’t get a picture of them playing unfortunately so I just used the one above for the purpose of keeping this post uniform. They were rocking the Cazzette heads when they were playing which were really fucking cool but they must have been overheating in them because toward the end of their set they came off. These guys played it just as I expected them to just pleasing the crowd all over the place. Dropping so many remixes and bootlegs of tracks that everyone recognizes and can sing along to which is what I think makes these guys so great. I didn’t write down as many notes or tracks from their set as I should have probably because they totally sucked me into their performance as well but I’ll recap with what I got. I know I heard a few of their bootlegs that I am familiar with like ‘Straight Outta Compton’, ‘Look at Me Now’ and ‘Set Fire to the Rain’. I also heard a few familiar remixes like of Avicii’s ‘Bromance’, ‘Rolling Stone T Shirt’ and ‘Believe It’. The biggest track from their performance I gotta say though is one of their own original tracks ‘Blood Theme’ which takes the theme song from the TV show Dexter and makes it into an electro dubby banger. Great performance from these two and I am definitely looking forward to what they have in store for us this year and to hopefully catch them live again soon.
Alesso
Alesso, dear lord did this guy kill it. I actually did a pretty good job of writing down some tracks from his set to so lets get into it. He started off with his track ‘Nillionaire’ which I thought was perfect for an opener and immediately got me super pumped for the rest of his set. He went on of course to play some of his remixes that got him to where he is today and were of course crowd favorites like ‘Titanium’, ‘Pressure’ and ‘Alive’. The crowd really got going though once he dropped some of his newer stuff like ‘Raise Your Head’ which really got people moving. Alesso brought some incredible bootlegs to the table as well in his performance which I was expecting after listening to his BBC Essential Mix last month. One bootleg in particular which I loved featured his remix of ‘Heiress of Valentina’ along with Porter Robinson’s latest ‘Language’ which is one of my favorite tracks so far this year. Of course though the one track that really got everyone going was his collaboration with labelmate and mentor Sebastian Ingrosso ‘Calling’ followed shortly after by the vocal version ‘Lose My Mind’, check below for a video. He also threw a few more favorites of mine like Deniz Koyu’s monster ‘Tung’ and the Bingo Player’s ‘L’Amour’ The best track of his set though for me was the one track going into his set that I was waiting for the whole time, the vocal mix of his upcoming track ‘Years’. I got a video of it which is posted below. God please let this track be released soon, it will be one of the biggest if not the biggest track of the summer in my opinion. Alesso closed his set out just as I expected him to with his latest brilliant remix which is of Keane’s ‘Silenced by the Night’ and is the perfect closer to a set. Well played Alesso, you are truly one of the best in the game right now.
Calvin Harris
Right after Alesso the main stage was graced by Calvin Harris, who I didn’t get a picture of so above is one from EDC 2011. He opened up his set with his classic track ‘I’m Not Alone’ but put a little twist on it mashing it up with Hardwell’s ‘Spaceman’ I thought the two worked real well together and definitely was a great way to get his set going. Calvin had a bunch of his classics in his set he also played ‘Flashback’ and ‘You Used to Hold Me’. He of course also had two of his latest commercial successes built into his set, ‘Feel so Close’ and his track he produced for Rihanna ‘We Found Love’ which I could have done without but I understand people expect them. He had a few really good bootlegs in his set also one of which really sticks out in my mind which was of Calvin’s track ‘Awooga’ with the vocals from Justice’s ‘We Are Your Friends’. ‘We Are Your Friends’ is pretty much built into almost everyones set one way or another but I really liked this ‘Awooga Friends’ bootleg and thought it was one of the best of the weekend. Calvin’s track that saw one of the best reactions from the crowd, which is to be expected, was the vocal mix of his track with Kelis ‘Bounce’. I also heard a few Nicky Romero tracks in his set like ‘Generation 303′ and ‘Toulouse’ as well as some Michael Woods with ‘No Access’ and ‘Bullet’. One track that Calvin played and I thought was way overplayed throughout the whole weekend was Calvin’s remix of Nero’s ‘Promises’. Don’t get me wrong I love that song and his remix is great but I heard it way too many times Alesso even played it right before Calvin went on. Check below for the video I got of his ‘I’m Not Alone Spaceman’ bootleg intro.
Sebastian Ingrosso
To wrap up my recap and review from Saturday at EDC NYC I have for you Sebastian Ingrosso who put on arguably the best performance of the day. I knew to expect great things from Ingrosso, who is 1/3 of the Swedish House Mafia, but he blow my expectations away with his performance. He had a few new tracks and bootlegs in his set but also kept the crowd going by playing some classic tracks and bootlegs that have become staples of his own set as well as SHM’s set. He opened his set up with SHM’s latest ‘Greyhound’ which I expected going into it and was very satisfied as its a nice bold way to kick off a set. I think one of the best parts of Seb’s set was definitely the array of bootlegs he brought to the table. He had some of his classic bootlegs like ‘Leave the World Behind’ paired with ‘Atom‘, ‘Otherside’ paired with ‘The Island’ and ‘EMP’ paired up with ‘Midnight City’. One of his newer bootlegs though that caught my attention featured Matisse and Sadko’s remix of ‘Beating of My Heart’ with the vocals from ‘Sweet Disposition’. It was during this bootleg that some of the best visuals of the entire weekend were taking place, the big screen was simply reading the lyrics to ‘Sweet Disposition’ making sure that if for some reason you didn’t know the lyrics you could sing along. Seb of course had to play ‘Calling’ and during it he called up Alesso to join him on stage and they raged out together for a while. Such a great relationship between those two and I hope to hear some more collaborations between them soon. The two biggest tracks from his set though were definitely Hard Rock Sofa and Swanky Tune’s upcoming track ‘Here We Go’ and also an ID which is a collab between Seb and Tommy Trash. Really looking forward to both of those tracks and they will both definitely be some big summer tracks to keep your eyes and ears peeled for. All in all I loved Ingrosso’s performance, he had so much energy and really channeled it into his performance and had the crowd going absolutely wild.
Hope you enjoyed my recap and review of Saturday of Electric Daisy Carnival New York City, stay tuned for my review of Sunday coming later this week.
-Mikey
