"Michael Jackson is still alive!" - Sampled drop during David Guetta's two hour closing set at the Electric Zoo Festival.
Gigantic electronic music festivals have always been more the province of the International EDM scene. However, with electronic music experiencing a renaissance level resurgence in the United States, the time was right for a US foray into a celebration of the vibe, culture and sonically astounding experience of dance music. The inaugural Electric Zoo Festival, held over this past Labor Day weekend in New York was a party that succeeded in capturing the essence of the intense passion people have for music, by presenting it in it's best light, outdoors, at Randall's Island Park, in such a manner where old school house head met up with hipster, candy ravers next to jacked up Staten Island and Jersey gym freaks and their orange tanned girlfriends. Everybody was represented, everyone was respected, and certainly a precedent was set for the justification of making this a regular addition to the national EDM calendar.
It's certainly not to say it wasn't expected. Between three tents and a monolithic mainstage that rivaled or even surpassed in size and grandeur anything seen at Ozzfest, the Warped Tour or any other giant national music festival from another genre, tens of thousands of fans were treated to some of the most phenomenal sets of dance music heard all year. Headlining the mainstage on day two was Frenchman David Guetta, DJ Magazine's 5th ranked DJ in the world, and arguably the most popular pop music producer of the last year. He's the producer of record of the Black Eyed Peas' "I Gotta Feeling," as well as the recently released album "One Love" that features Estelle, Ne Yo, Will I Am (of the aforementioned Peas), and resurrects the career of ex Destiny's Child member Kelly Rowland. Guetta delivered a set that threw the gauntlet down to the rest of the electronic community, in that starting with his typical upbeat, arena rock level sonic French electro sound, wove its way through techno, hip hop, soul, R & B, Baltimore club (yes, there was actual club music being played by David Guetta) and so many other styles. With the most important vocalists of the present on his own tracks, and having even gone as far as remixing Flo Rida's "Low," he's taken the fearless experimentation and audacity to crash genres with no expectation as to if it will work, and synthesized it for mainstream music in such a way that his pop success shouldn't be respected, but applauded as well.
The world's Number One according to DJ Magazine was there as well, as Armin van Buuren headlined the mainstage on day one, creating delirium amongst a crowd chock full of his fans, people who travelled from near, far and wide to see the man spin. Yes, it can be argued that seeing Armin at NYCs Pacha or DC's Fur is a truer experience of his aural monstrosity, but, to hear him (or, pretty much any of the other headliners) with an arena rock level soundsystem that still preserved the sound without distortion of treble or bass and rock star level light show, well, that's the lure that brought people to NYC from as far away as Europe, South America and the Middle East.
But the highlights weren't limited to the mainstage. Ed Banger Records' DJ Mehdi turned his 90 minute set in the "hipster" Respect Grove tent into a three hour musical journey, as the man playing after him, Daft Punk manager and Mehdi's friend, Busy P, let Mehdi pretty much man the decks for the majority of his set as well, as Mehdi had found a groove, locked into it, and just wasn't letting go. Benny Benassi, in the consistently great Riverside Arena tent closed out day one with one of the hottest and hardest techno sets of the festival, sending a crowd being pushed to delirium after hearing the likes of Chris Lake and Robbie Rivera beforehand to have enough energy to probably raise the roof. Steve Aoki as per usual created a human spectacle of what electro consumption can do to the human spirit, and Danny Tenaglia and Tiga also went in big on day one as well to the surprise of no one, but to the betterment of the festival as a whole.
Day Two's vibe was decidedly less aggressive, as I frankly could've hopped in the car and driven home after hearing the legendary Frankie Knuckles and Hercules and Love Affair's Andy Butler spin absolutely beautiful house music and disco. But then I would've missed the spectacle of Desyn Masiello's set of jungle and yes, drum and bass, or the incredibly awesome visual of Steve Angello's populist electro house set where the entire crowd looked skyward expecting Woodstock level rainstorms, but somewhere between him dropping La Roux's epic "In for the Kill," on the mainstage and everyone rocking the other tents, the clouds relented, and the party just got rowdier.
Yes, if your idea of a fun night out at the club is donning a giant Deadmau5 mouse head and bobbing along, painting your face and letting Markus Schulz's trance take you away, jamming to Lindstrom and Prins Thomas' space music, jumping and breaking to Victor Calderone or Richie Hawtin, this past weekend was the closest thing you'll get to Christmas but the real article.
It was a transcendent celebration of the languages of electronic dance music preaching love. And thus, it was a success.
Electric Zoo was such an incredible event and there was so much awesomeness jam-packed into two days, here's a 5 minute video recap of what went down.
