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Music

Into The Desert: Guns, Girls, and the Great Outdoors

Kill Frenzy, Monstercat, and dirtybird’s finest escape from EDC week.

EDC week is known for many things: opulence, insanity, and indulgence of extravagant proportions. In addition to hosting the world's top electronic musicians and 400,000 of their fans, it also serves as the perfect opportunity for outlandish group activities. Swarms of artists, otherwise on tour and crisscrossing the continent, are brought together for one wild weekend. Many brands use this opportunity to sponsor pool parties; some seek other means to enjoy themselves.

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When the dust had settled, we caught wind of a private party thrown by Peerless Group, a Californian marketing agency for global brands, in the middle of the desert. Normally, this wouldn't warrant investigation. When we found out that some of our favourite artists from dirtybird and Monster Cat, as well as an assortment of semi-automatic machine guns would be at said event, well, you could consider us intrigued. We contacted Dustin Thornton, a Dallas-based photographer going by the name Dustin Hollywood that we knew had worked on projects with dirtybird artists before, to share his experiences and photographs.

Read our EDC Day 3 Recap here

"Basically, Peerless has started doing this thing where every EDC Las Vegas they go out into the desert on a party bus with some girls and DJ equipment for some fun away from the strip. This year, they spiced things up and brought a baby goat. It was seriously adorable… anyway. I was in town shooting photos for some of dirtybird's DJs and jumped at the opportunity to shoot some guns too."

"We arrive at what can only be described as 'butt-fuck nowhere' to find a shooting range with a beat up car at the end of it. Kill Frenzy and I had never fired a gun before so we paid a bit more attention to the instructor during our briefing."

Read our EDC Survival Guide here.

"You can tell from the photos that I was stoked to say the least (that's me in the blue shirt, with the shit-eating grin on my face). With his head freshly-shaved and those blue tinted sunglasses, Kill Frenzy looked like a lead character from some straight-to-Gamecube videogame."

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"After we got the hang of the semi-automatics, they brought out the big guns. I forget what they were called, all I remember is that they were loud. Really loud. The other guys (Kennedy Jones, Ookay, Getter, Bare, Dirtyphonics and a few others) were loving it."

"Once the junker [car] had been lit up for a solid hour, we headed over to where Peerless had set up the tents with the DJ equipment and girls. It was a little surreal to see people DJing in the middle of the desert, but when in Rome, you know?"

"A bit later, we all strapped on helmets and ripped around a track in these giant dune buggies. I really didn't want to head back to the Holiday Inn that I was staying at, but by that point it was mid-afternoon on the Friday and I really needed to nap before the actual festivities began. We hopped back on the party bus and went back into town to get ready for the main event. This may sound un-American, but I didn't realize how fun shooting guns and driving like a maniac could really be [laughs]."

View the full Into The Desert photo gallery here.

Check out Dustin Hollywood's portfolio here.