Thank you everyone for the amazing response I got to my Saturday Review of EDC NYC! I’m back with my recap and review of what went down on Sunday at Electric Daisy Carnival New York City in East Rutherford, NJ. Once again Insomniac Events and Pacha NYC could not have asked for better weather for their event on Sunday and just like Saturday the event was top notch production quality. Just like Saturdays review I am going to give you recaps of all the DJs I was able to catch along with some of my favorite parts of their sets and some videos I took at the event. I’ll give each DJ a little review as well and let you guys know who I thought put on the best performances of the day and what you need to know about their performances. Not gonna do too much of an intro here so let’s get to the recap and review.
Sunday
Sunnery James & Ryan Marciano
As I often am I was a little late arriving on Sunday so I missed Bassjackers which I was pretty upset about but I did make it in time for the second set on my schedule which was the Dutch duo of Sunnery James and Ryan Marciano. I love these guys they are just full of energy and I think they are some of the best live performers in the EDM game right now, definitely under-appreciated here in the states. I absolutely loved their opener, which was ‘Now Let Me See You Work’ by Joe Brunning, which in my opinion they couldn’t have picked a better track to open with. It’s got that nice little countdown before that super awesome groovy bass drop. These two came with some of their huge remixes like their re-fixxx of the massive SHM & Knife Party track ‘Antidote’ which people were really feeling. They decided to go with a classic remix of The Red Hot Chili Peppers crowd pleasing anthem ‘Otherside’ by Funkerman instead of the Third Party remix which many others opted for. I liked this it fit into their set real well and even though I prefer the Third Party remix in this setting the Funkerman one was perfect. They had a bootleg of Nero’s ‘Promises’ thrown in their at some point too, unfortunately at this point I was so sick of this song because literally every single DJ had it thrown in their set somewhere. They of course had their massive track ‘Lethal Industry’ which is an updated take of Tiesto’s classic, but the highlights of their set came in the form of two different bootlegs. The first which I have a video of below Sunnery and Ryan took the vocals of Martin Solveig’s ‘The Night Out’ and combined it with the massive electro track from Zedd ‘Shotgun’ to make one massive bootleg. The other bootleg took Sander Van Doorn’s ‘Koko’ and paired it up with another song I heard a lot of this weekend Nari & Milani’s festival banger ‘Atom’. This in my opinion was the best bootleg of ‘Atom’ I heard all weekend that nice serene whistling in ‘Koko’ paired up with the massive ‘Atom’ was perfect. Hats off to the Dutchmen Sunnery James and Ryan Marciano you guys are a force to be reckon with I look forward to our next meeting.
Chuckie
Chuckie! The king of dirty dutch house was next up on the mainstage and after seeing this man at Identity last summer I knew we were all in for a treat. He came out opening with Frank Sinatra’s ‘New York, New York’. Are you kidding me?! This was so sick talk about getting the hometown crowd into it that is how you do it. He moved right into the DJ Ortzy and Nico Hamuy remix of his club banger ‘Who is Ready to Jump’ which was great however I really wanted to hear Chuckie’s Jump Around bootleg of ‘Who is Ready to Jump’. He moved on to is latest track ’1234′ which is a collab between himself, Laidback Luke and Martin Solveig that is obviously a huge hit for the festival crowd. Staying true to his dirty dutch and hip hop roots he played some Biggie ‘Where Brooklyn At’ then right into one of his most famous bootlegs ‘Niggas in Satisfaction’ which takes ‘Satisfaction’ by Benny Bennassi and ‘Niggas in Paris’ by Jay and Kanye. Chuckie dropped a remix of Tiesto’s ‘Love Comes Again’ next which I think was the Hardwell rework but don’t quote me on that. He had an awesome VIP of ‘What Happens in Vegas’ for the festival which had the sample say “What happens in New York stays in New York” instead of the normal “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas”. He then played a few bootlegs with some crowd pleasers like ‘Kernkraft 400′ by Zombienation and ‘We Will Rock You’ by Queen paired with ‘Internet Friends by Knife Party which dropped right into the ‘Who is Ready to Jump’ sample before the ‘Move it 2 the Drum’ drop. I love that ‘Move it 2 the Drum’ is always still in his set that track never gets old for me especially when he only plays the tech drop from it, which is obviously Hardwell’s contribution the track. He closed out his set with a bootleg of ‘We are your Friends’, of course can’t make it through a set without hearing that one, into his track ‘Let the Bass Kick’. He closed out last time with ‘Let the Bass Kick’ and he never lets it drop all the way which is annoying cause I love track, let that drop all the way Chuckie! If you haven’t had the pleasure of seeing Chuckie live yet, do yourself a favor and go see him he is one hell of an entertainer.
Dirty South
Following Chuckie on the main stage was the Australian Dragan Roganovic better known by his stage name Dirty South. He had some awesome visuals during his set and especially his intro was really sweet. To open his set he had a little intro with a video then dropped right into one of his greatest remixes and one of my favorites of Nero’s ‘Me and You’. Such a perfect opener with those vocals “Are you ready, do you know? I feel it too, I feel this for you.” I snagged a video of most of the intro and its posted below. He went on to play another favorite of DJs at EDC the Swedish House Mafia’s latest ‘Greyhound’ which I think is the groups best track to date. He also played both of his massive hit tracks with Thomas Gold and Kate Elsworth ‘Alive’ and ‘Eyes Wide Open’, loved hearing both of those tracks played that loudly and they definitely got a great reception from the crowd. He also threw in the Calvin Harris remix of ‘Promises’ by Nero as pretty much every other DJ did then moved onto one of my favorite tracks so far this year and definitely a massive festival track the Bingo Player’s edit of Carl Trick’s ‘Mad Dash’. He then played a few tracks in bootlegs that were common in most peoples sets this weekend Gotye’s ‘Somebody That I Used to Know’, Axwell’s mix of ‘In My Mind’ and ‘Sweet Disposition’. One track he dropped which I was very happy to hear and wish I had heard it in more DJs sets this weekend was Third Party’s ‘Feel‘, it just has such a great festival feel to it. One of my favorite parts of his set was definitely when he dropped the MAKJ bootleg of Dirty South’s track ‘Phazing’ paired with Alesso and Seb Ingrosso’s ‘Calling’ simply called ‘Calling Phazing’. The next two bootlegs were really well done as well the first paired a favorite of many DJs at the festival Florence and the Machine’s ‘You Got the Love’ and another favorite Nari & Milani’s ‘Atom’. You can pair just about anything up with ‘You Got the Love’ and ‘Atom’ as well and it probably makes for a decent bootleg but I did like this one a lot. The other bootleg which Afrojack would play later on took Dirty South’s remix of ‘Coming Home’ with Daft Punk’s ‘Aerodynamic’ and Hard Rock Sofa’s ‘Quasar’ which makes the Sebastian Ingrosso and Axwell bootleg called ‘Coming Home Aerodynamic Quasar’. The highlight of Dirty South’s set however came toward the end when he finally dropped his upcoming track called ‘City of Dreams’ which is a collab with Alesso. I managed to grab a video of part of this but if you wanna hear a more complete live rip of it check the link in the previous sentence. This is gonna be one of the anthems of this summer without a doubt so keep your eyes out for it. Check the two vids out from the performance below and go see Dirty South.
R3hab
This is gonna be a short recap because I didn’t stay at R3hab very long. I recently saw him at Pacha’s birthday party when he played his 6am set and I was disappointed by his set at EDC. Whether this is because I am not the biggest fan of R3hab or the fact that his set got boring to me after about 20 minutes because he just plays the same remix essentially over and over again. Either way I did really enjoy his set when I saw him at Pacha and maybe its because he had a similar one here I dunno I just wasn’t that into it. He opened his set with the same song as he did at Pacha which is the Afrojack edit of ‘Sending My Love’ which is a collab between Hard Rock Sofa, R3hab and Swanky Tunes. He played his remix of ‘Danza Kuduro’ which definitely was a crowd pleaser but unfortunately his MC talked over about half of it, don’t even get me started on MCs because this post will be a 10 page essay. He then dropped Nero ‘Promises’ which I had heard 25 times at this point and then dropped one of his newer remixes of Wynter Gordon’s ‘Till Death’. I actually really enjoy his ‘Till Death’ remix because it has a lot different structure then his normal remixes instead of having a crazy buildup into a chainsaw madness drop it has a nice bassline throughout the song. He then dropped his remix of Kaskade’s ‘Eyes’ which was my cue to leave, I still can’t listen to that remix. Not sure why he got signed up to remix that track like if Kaskade picked it or what but I can’t stand it. R3hab I got lots of love for you man but this set just wasn’t for me.
Sub Focus
After leaving R3hab I decided to wander into the Stadium and see what was going down on the dubstep stage and to my pleasant surprise Sub Focus was playing. I walked in as he was dropping his remix of Rusko’s ‘Hold On’ which is probably his most commercially known track and of course a favorite of most people. I did my best to pick out as many tracks as I could but I am not as good at ID’ing dubstep on the fly as I am for house tracks. Next track I was able to recognize was his collab with Alice Gold ‘Out of the Blue’, which is an amazing drum and bass track. I recognized a few of his classic tracks that I had my ears pealed for ‘Could Be Real’, ‘Rock It’ and ‘Last Jungle’. He also dropped Flux Pavilion’s ‘Bass Cannon’ somewhere in his set which is always one I like to hear live. The highlight of his set though was definitely my favorite track of his ‘Falling Down’ which he had something special in store for us when he dropped the VIP mix which I got a video of and his below. I’ll definitely look into seeing Sub Focus again and I am glad I got to check him out at EDC.
Afrojack
To finish off Sunday at EDC NYC I caught legendary Dutch DJ Afrojack on the mainstage. I caught him at UMass a few months back and loved his set so I was real excited for him at EDC. He kicked his set off with his unreleased track ‘Rock the House’, what a way to open it up. He then played a bootleg he often brings out which is of Roxy Cottontails ‘Lets Make Nasty’ paired with Afrojack’s track ‘Polkadots’. He then dropped a new track which I grabbed a video of and is posted below and is a massive track that had the whole place moving. He then went on to play Rihanna’s ‘We Found Love’ right into his edit of ‘Sending My Love’. Then right into his festival anthem ‘The Way We See the World’ which is a collab with Dimitri Vegas, Like Mike and the Nervo twins followed by another one of his tracks this time his collab with Steve Aoki ‘No Beef’. Next was a variety of remixes and bootlegs, first was Afrojack’s new remix of ‘Internet Friends’ then a bootleg of ‘Lionheart’ and ‘Louder than Words’ with ‘Pacha on Acid’. Afrojack like most of the other DJs had his own take of Gotye’s ‘Somebody that I Used to Know’ he chose to bootleg it with Tommy Trash’s ‘Ladi Dadi’ remix. Dropped another classic with ‘Bangduck’ before moving onto that bootleg I talked about earlier ‘Coming Home Aerodynamic Quasar’. Then he had a bootleg of Calvin Harris’s ‘Feel So Close’ with the ever bootlegged Justice and Simian track ‘We Are You Friends’. He then had a nice progressive track that reminded me a lot of ‘Doing it Right’ before moving into the finale of his set. He brought up labelmates Shermanology to help him out with ‘Cant Stop Me’ and to do live vocals on Usher’s ‘Without You’. He then played the festival favorite ‘In My Mind’ before dropping his most commercially successful track ‘Give Me Everything’. Next he of course had to squeeze in ‘Take Over Control’ which he bootlegged with ‘Bangduck’ and apparently he thought this was his closing song check the 5:00 mark on this video. He proclaimed “Oh Shit I can do one more?!” and he did one more that’s for sure. He closed out the whole festival with in my opinion one of the best closing tracks ever Tiesto’s ‘Maximal Crazy’. This track was accompanied by a fireworks show and everyone going wild one last time before the festival came to a close. Couldn’t have asked for a better closer for the weekend!
That’s it for my review and recap of Sunday thanks for reading and hope you enjoyed it! Let me know what you think of this one and my Saturday one and thanks for the support!
-Mikey
