EDC New York Recap: The Good the Bad and the Fuzzy

Photo: Bennett Sell-Kline

This weekend the third annual Electric Daisy Carnival New York took over the MetLife stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, against a background of converging highways, swamplands, and the suspected location of Jimmy Hoffa's remains.

Held on the same weekend as Mysteryland in Upstate New York and Movement in Detroit, along with Sunset Music Festival in Florida, Sasquatch in Washington State, the ongoing Piknic Electronik in Montreal and Lightning in a Bottle in the California desert, EDC has held fast to its reputation as a flagbearer of big-name festival culture in the United States—while also catering to underground house, techno, and bass music aficionados. With headliners Tiësto, Bassnectar, Martin Garrix, Hardwell, Carl Cox, and Green Velvet, the weekend's programming also welcomed up-and-comers Dusky, French Fries, Kastle, and Rudimental, plus OGs like Boys Noize, Gina Turner and 2manydjs.

Walking through the stadium's outer parking lot, past the bag checks and pat-downs, and into EDC's inner sanctum, the muffled cries of limitless breakdowns and eternal build-ups recalled SNL's recent EDM spoof—where a godlike DJ named Daviinci blew fans' heads off as they vibrated in anticipation waiting for the bass. Despite the incisive, high-profile parody, the crowd at EDC showed no signs of irony as they ran from the entrance towards the main stage holding their hands in the air and singing along to songs about redemption and forgiveness.

The excitement and anticipation of day one, however, was literally dampened by flood warnings in the morning that soon gave way to torrential downpour, transforming the MetLife parking lot into something out of Waterworld, with less Kevin Costner and more sad, struggling ravers. Having closed the main outdoor stages, the festival directed its kandi-strung, wide-eyed attendees into the stadium, revealing flaws in the festival's rain preparedness. Mascara and day-glo paint ran in streaks on the faces of confused teenagers, most of whom packed nothing more than the crop tops and tiny shorts they had on their bodies.

The stages soon opened back up and we quickly found ourselves in the more psychedelic of the four venues, the NeonGARDEN, where John Digweed was serving narcotic techno loops to the more seasoned dance music contingent. With weed smoke backlit by LED arrays and enough room to actually move some limbs, it was easy to get lost in the sea of sloganeering tank tops, which made statements like "House Music, Bitch," "Where's Molly," and "Show Me Your Fucking Tits." We watched one young gentleman to our right knock back a bag of magic mushrooms in one go—with sunset still four hours away.

Meanwhile, the CosmicMEADOW, located on the actual football field of MetLife Stadium—the location of Super Bowl XLVIII—was serving HARD-curated electro variations in the form of sets from Destructo, Oliver, Alex Metric and more. At the CircuitGROUNDS stage, the lighting and pyrotechnics engineers invited us onto the platform with them, where amidst R3hab's Dutch house drops, we watched as video artist Mark Fingerhut controlled the stage's gigantic lighting arrays and video platforms in real time. "I love it so much," he said of the EDC spectacle. "It's the culture now—it's the culture of the time. As much as you may not agree with it, this is what's relevant. I think it's really fascinating."

By sunset, the audience had settled in, dried off, and was starting to let loose. The cuddle-puddles and massage circles started to form on the astroturf laid out in the shadow of the stadium. Every so often one of the guys with kandi masks would come up and ask, "Are you OK?" We couldn't tell if he thought we were on too many drugs or not enough. "Are the guys with the masks holding?" One security guard asked us while standing in line for the bathroom. "I don't care about busting them. I just wanna have fun," he assured us.

As day one closed, battle lines were drawn when attendees were asked to choose between Hardwell, Afrojack, Loco Dice back to back with Carl Cox, and Bassnectar, who closed out their respective stages. Standing on the 50 yard line, we got "Nectar'd," as the ravers like to say, watching the longhaired festie superstar maneuver between drum & bass, heavyweight dubstep, and genres that have no name yet because they're from the future. With a slew of clever references and quickfire samples that drew from classics like ODB, The Fugees, and a sprinkling of roots reggae sound bites, Bassnectar brought a distinctly American sound to the festival's more globally oriented programming. No faces went unmelted.

Day two was a much less hectic affair, despite an early set from Headhunterz—the festival's only hardstyle DJ—who relentlessly distributed heavily distorted, 150 beat-per-minute kick drums for an hour as the festival's resident goths emerged from the shadows to shuffle in circles around a giant mechanical owl. Meanwhile at the NeonGARDEN tent, Midwestern house legend MK passed the decks to British dubstep-gone-disco party prince Skream, who served sultry, if slightly forgettable, house grooves. Bassjackers was on stage three spinning stark big room house with very little of the euphoric, candy-coated pop leanings you might hear from Calvin Harris or Hardwell.

By the Ferris wheel we saw a mean, muscular brute with a pacifier in his mouth walking his girlfriend on a leash like a miniature Schnauzer. We watched 2manydjs play to a nearly empty stadium, despite being one of the most influential dance music acts of the last two decades. We drank Hennessy with Rudimental after their live set of pop-inflected drum & bass and house music, which featured astounding live R&B croons, but overall felt like a bit of a farce in terms of the "live" aspects of the show.

Dusky sounded like Disclosure-gone-off-the-deep-end, and refreshingly, were one of the few acts to play bass heavy, UK-centric house music variations, incorporating the throat-rumbling subs of early dubstep with swinging, 4x4 high-hats and kicks. Green Velvet followed up with an onslaught of alien techno, having flown in from Detroit where he played an early set at Movement. We wondered where the hell all the trance had gone—even Tommy Trash's "Lord of the Trance" DJ set the previous night more was big room house hybrids than anything else.

As the second night drew to a close, we tried to find the press tent that had been pointed out to us earlier, but it seems there was not one single authority figure amidst the sea of uncontrollable, libidinal monsters, so we gave up and watched Tiësto from the safety of a picnic bench.

Walking back to our taxi across the grounds, we talked about our favorite acts and realized that, despite being awkwardly plopped down in a parking lot in the armpit of New York City, EDC had done an impressive job booking to a wide range of tastes.

There's been plenty of speculation recently about EDM's inevitable "bubble burst"—a theory supported by Ultra Records' new emphasis on deep, melodic house and the increasing popularity of labels like Anjunadeep. And after two days at EDC, it's clear that Insomniac got the memo. Sure—Hardwell and Martin Garrix were in the building, but there were stages for everyone, and rather than throwing all of their money at the Aviciis and Aokis of the world, they decided to spread the love around.

Max and David couldn't stop yelling "this is music!" throughout the weekend. @maxpearl + @DLGarber

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