Entertainment

Published on August 6th, 2012 | by EDMinsider

5

Event Review: Tomorrowland 2012 Out Rages Us All

The first words that came to mind when the Tomorrowland festival grounds came into view were, “holy shit”. Seriously, I had never seen any festival space so vast and enormous. To get from one side to the other, it took between twenty and  twenty five minutes and that was without distractions from food vendors, stages and other attractions. My first stop after the press house which served us vodka red bulls in separate cups (one for vodka and one for red bull) was Thomas Gold on the main stage. The main stage is like no other stage I have seen: enormous and distracting in the sense that anywhere you look there is something new to see. The whole time digital eyes on the pages of a book were staring down at us from the fairy tales Tomorrowland replicates around the festival.

Everywhere around me people were laughing and talking in different languages, which reminded me even more of how international Tomorrowland was. The rest of the day was spent between Angger Dimas , Alesso, Mustard Pimp (live) and Above and Beyond sampling different tastes of electronic music. The rain didn’t stop the party although I have to say Europeans don’t quite rage as hard as us Americans. I don’t know if it is our “new found” love for electronic  music or something in our water, but it seemed like every stage we went to the people jumping the highest and fist pumping the hardest were from the good old U S of A.

Saturday was by far my favorite day. With renewed energy, my PIC (partner in crime) and I made it to Swanky Tunes’ early set. [Disclaimer] This is when I started noticing one of the aspects of Tomorrowland I have to criticize: very similar set lists. Kick out the Epic Motherfucker, yes an amazing song, but still, was heard about 15 times. So were Nari & Miliani’s Atom and Axwell’s remix of In My Mind. It might have been that the crowd was so eclectic, but after a while it got repetitive. I expected DJs to play more diverse sets or something special for Tomorrowland, but the sets were pretty repetitive. Swanky Tunes, one of my favorite DJ duos, along with many others were guilty of the “same set” syndrome. This though, did not take away from the overall energy and enchantment of the festival, it just allowed me to observe who really played outstanding sets.

After Swanky Tunes, I headed to the main stage for Hardwell who put on a great show. He played his new track How We Do and Hell Yeah by Tiesto, both collaborations with Showtek, made the crowd go crazy. Later that day, America’s own Porter Robinson threw down one of the best sets of the festival. He put on an incredibly balanced set between his own music and others as well as electro and dubstep. I was incredibly impressed. Porter’s stage was also the infamous one from the Tomorrowland 2011 after video with the smiling sun which illuminated his set even more.

The killer of the day was Tristan Garner. Wow- go listen to his set is all I can say. Talk about a dj who played a unique set. Tristan played new songs and old, his bootlegs and own  productions, but in a way I did not hear any other dj play at the festival or maybe even ever before in my rage career.  His mashups were not the typical two song formula, but sometimes up to four or five songs. Rock n Roll was interspersed seamlessly and he managed to throw in over fifty songs within his set time. I think this is where my muscles went from sore to destroyed. I skipped out on SHM since after Tristan’s set, it felt like it would almost spoil the ringing in my brain, but opted for some dubstep. Deep dirty gritty dub step. I had no idea who was playing until the end: Roksonix & Mc Skydro, but that is what festivals are for and they killed it.

When I woke up on Sunday, I couldn’t believe that it was the last day of the festival. Thus, the saying go big or go home never rang so true (literally). It was time to go big. Gregor Klosman started off my day followed by Nicky Romero, who played one of the best sets of the festival: full of energy and his own unique Nicky twist. Tommy Trash served us his signature sound and then Sander Van Doorn proved to be his talented self with his trancey undertones and dirty dutch beats.

By that point, there were only four hours and counting. Guetta was on the mainstage and it was packed corner to corner. His set wasn’t anything special, but the crowd was so energetic and united it created such a memorable vibe. Guetta loves fireworks, so fireworks there were, shinning down upon us amidst the sprinkling of rain that was misting all around us. When I looked behind me at the tens of thousands of people, all united for their love of house music, I got the chills.

What a way to spend three days surrounded by people from around the world all in the same place for their love of music, happiness and peace. Tomorrowland was remarkable not just because of the music, but the people, production and energy. As they say: yesterday is history, today is a gift, tomorrow is a mystery-  that is until next year.

Article by: Sophie Solomon

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