My last music adventure was Labor Day Weekend, which took me to to Randalls Island in New York City for one of the most popular electro/dance festivals of the East coast, Electric Zoo, that left me yearning for a little bit more of live trance and minimal house. The festival sold out for the second year in a row, and the island was jammed with dancers and music lovers from all over. The main stage and three different smaller ones provided an amazing range of acts that made me feel like a kid in candy shop. As it was with many other festivals, the acts overlapped, so you had to be ready to sprint.
My favorite tent, the Sunday School Grove, had house playing all day long and was in my opinion the ultimate spot of Zoo. The crowd here was super engaged with all the kick-drum and experimental beats from artists like Gui Borratto and Dubfire. With live performances from contemporary artists like Nicolas Jaar, there was something for everyone. Here is the video of the layered live set of this 21 year old music genius. If you don’t know much about him, I highly recommend you check out his album Space is Only Noise, that showcases an array of experimental minimal beats.
Another performance that was pretty stellar was the one of New York’s disco duo Chromeo. Here is the video of his song Night by Night.
Twitter sensation, music producer, DJ and overall cool dude Diplo pleased the crowd with popular remixes of his project Major Lazer as well as dropped some Moombaton, and then surprised us all with Puerto Rican ghetto Princess Maluca Mala.
To close the night and thus my summer fest experiences, music legend and techno pioneer Richie Hawtin, moved the Sunday School Grove to utterly frenzy with a set that can only be described as foreplay before the best sex you‰’ll ever had. Yes, that’s a bold statement, but you had to be there to see the way he slowly dropped techno and built up the energy with heavier tech-house beats.
And that was a little a breakdown of my summer experiences. Here is a little shout out (sort of) that Diplo sent American University during this year’s Mad Decent Block Party in Philadelphia.