EDC NY 2015 Recap: Dance Music’s Biggest Parking Lot Rave
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EDC NY 2015 Recap: Dance Music’s Biggest Parking Lot Rave

It’s not actually in the Greatest City in the World, but it’s still New York City’s festival.

When attempting examination of the EDM zeitgeist, Electric Daisy Carnival is usually a good place to start. With its marquee event, EDC Vegas, arguably the festival calendar's most centerpiece, and now for the third year running, the New Jersey-located, New York monikered, EDC New York, you'll be hard pressed to find a place with more kandi, fuzzy boots, fireworks, stimulants, and brain-pummeling dance music from all side of the genre spectrum. However, since the festival's 2014 edition, there have been a lot of changes in what defines this zeitgeist; we continue to experience fluctuations in what sounds and artists evolve and grow, begin to dissipate, and inevitably, those that simply refuse to go away (sorry, Benny Benassi). At this year's EDC NY at East Rutherford, New Jersey's MetLife stadium, May 23 and 24, we got a little taste of it all.

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The festival's smaller main stage, the circuitGROUNDs, operated as a ground zero for stereotypical EDM tendencies throughout the majority of the weekend. Most in the crowd either donned some form of rave attire, or a t-shirt featuring outlandish proclamations like "Fuck Me," "I Rolled My Way Through Graduate School," or a personal favorite of the weekend—"I'm Fat, Let's Party." Musically, the stage represented an interesting mix of standard big-room and electro (Afrojack, Nicky Romero), and others, all in one of the event's most high profile spaces. Jack Beats offered some early UK bass tones after Martin Solveig performed a coupling of future-house (one of the most featured sounds of the entire weekend) and the "Hello"-esque pop fluff of his big burst of success a few years ago. Still, the most potent aspect of his repertoire is probably his new mustache.

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Krewella continued in the of live performance they began at Ultra. Does anyone really care that they have a full band on a stage that is so big, DJs look like pogo-ing dots by comparison? Why was their guitarist reminiscent of the one from Mad Max: Fury Road, brashly leading a frenetic path of loudness? Anyone deserves credit for trying to offer something different in a often stale domain, but perhaps Krewella should reserve their band for concert venues, not open air festivals where the sound is already bad enough.

Other artists managed to offer mainstage sets in a manner that blurred the lines between the EDM boredom and something potentially more exciting. Brodinski played a fun rap-heavy 4PM set (to a strangely motionless crowd). The Magician donned an Uncle Sam-themed blazer as he deployed feel-good house jams, including Disclosure's new club tune "Bang That," another regular throughout the weekend. Duke Dumont kept a big crowd locked in uplifting house bliss before In the final hours of the second day before Kaskade delivered a solid display of his talents, interlacing emotive big-room, thumping electro, and some anthemic breakdowns.

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Over on the kineticFIELD, EDC's sensory-overloading mega-structure, which this year featured two giant (slightly terrifying) owls attached to a cathedral-esque mainframe as it had at EDC Vegas the year before, Eric Prydz put down the darkest mainstage set of the weekend while a giant technicolor octopus eventually made its way into the crowd. During one lengthy segment in the set, he fired off rounds from his Mouseville catalogue, which led to a refreshingly weird vibe at a place where bland rage typically supplants vibes. He even dared to tease the masses with slowly unfolding progressive builds, a risky move when playing a crowd whose attention span is hedonistically finely tuned for drops. Luckily, everyone got their fix… eventually.

Instead of being inside the actual cavernous stadium, the cosmicMEADOW stage was tucked away on a far corner of the fest this year, (good call, EDC), serving as a safe zone for bass-heavy sounds over the course of two days. It also featured some of the more visibly devoted fans of the weekend, belonging to Flosstradamus and Bassnectar. DJ Josh Young acted as MC for most of the time during Floss's set, inducing turnt hysteria to the sprawling crowd below. With their warning sign imagery rotating on the giant screens like an apocalyptic monolith, the duo let loose with a medley of hip-hop remixes and unrelenting trap anthems, sending the crowd's twerk-meters to peak levels. Shortly after, long-haired wobble overlord Bassnectar was in full-form with his perfected coupling of thunderous bass loops layered over everything from slo-mo rock to full on ragga dub. The crowd was a sea of his iconic logo on posters, flags, and a whole lot of loyal bass heads.

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For those thirsty for stripped-down underground sounds, the neonGARDEN tent was prime real estate. Hosted by Carl Cox on the first day, the stage was an oasis for nonstop techno pummeling with Joseph Capriati pulling a jam-packed early afternoon crowd, solidifying the Naples-based artist as one of the brightest stars in the genre. Another highlight was Dubfire, as the erstwhile Deep Disher played a standout set of maniacal rolling techno, prompting an eruption of an epic dance circles in the crowd, filled with back-flips, jackers, shufflers, and some serious techno swag. Sunday in neonGARDEN flipped the script to the more minimal, tech-house side of the seesaw, with two stunning live sets from Germany's Recondite and Lithuania's Ten Walls, who littered an eager crowd with his hotly tipped of stomping synthwork. Innervisions co-founders Âme and Dixon also held things down to much applause with some neverending basslines and seriously heady techno. At one point during Ame's set, a gang of pink-wigged clown dancers performed some synchronized, spanking, twerking, and other forms of sexually-infused movement, which was odd, but lightened the dark mood. This stage was also had the festival's greatest per capita quantity of visible inebriation. Hopefully, everyone there was drinking plenty of water too.

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EDC is indeed one of the most high-profile showcases of big-name dance music and culture in the New York (even though it actually takes place in New Jersey): From the classic PLUR-centric elements of its Sin City counterpart (the merch tent actually sells PLUR flags) to its lit-up carnival rides, from giant, illuminated daisies to a Burning Man-inspired boomboxARTCAR, which featured some local talent like Brooklyn bass queens Star Eyes and Jubilee in the final hours of the weekend. EDC NY seamlessly offers a diverse, easily navigable menu of music with the to-be-expected EDM stars like Tiësto and Calvin Harris, underground kings like Carl Cox and Loco Dice, subgenre ambassadors like Yellow Claw and Gina Turner, and even drum and bass icon Andy C. Still, while it might be convenient, throwing a party in the parking lot doesn't lend itself to the most tangible of vibes. The character of the desert in its Las Vegas older sibling is mostly lost in MetLife's sprawling, kind of gross, sea of pavement.

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Regardless, most customers seemed satisfied and everything seemed to go smoothly over the weekend. Even being a bridge or tunnel away from the actual city, this was indeed a festival for New York's crowd, and the DJs who they love and love them back. When Tiësto briefly paused his set—momentarily pushing the excess, madness, and sensory overload to the sidelines—he took the mic to say, "New York City is the greatest city in the world," you could feel just how true it was.

David is THUMP's Homepage Editor. He's examining the EDM zeitgeist on Twitter.