Doing some digging on the Symbiosis website and social, I noticed that Madelyn Grant had liked their Facebook page – she’s featured on Emancipator’s latest single, Seven Seas. So instantly I thought, Madelyn might be there too! I asked her, she’s not :(
She’s one of the main reasons I keep this thing around, so I gotta at least try to get her out here and play live with Emancipator at Symbiosis. I think it would be their first time playing live together, at least I’m pretty sure it would be. And who cares! She needs to be there!
So what do we gotta do to make this happen? Mind you, I’m well unaware of the logistics of getting her out here. Or if she’s even available. And I’m probably just being selfish and no one wants it that bad. But they should! And I have to try and so do you if you feel so inclined.
Outside Lands begins my favorite time of the year. It’s good weather in San Francisco, except in Golden Gate Park where it’s held, and there are plenty of fun things right around the corner. Treasure Island Music Festival, Beyond Wonderland & SF MusicTech to name three.
This year’s lineup for OSL is looking to be one of its best. I’ve compiled 12 of my favorites, not including Elton, D’Angelo, St. Vincent, Leon Bridges & Toro y Moi. Their SoundCloud presence is lacking and 8tracks doesn’t give us enough numbers to give a damn about dat.
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Below the playlist we have two highlights from the festival, Odesza’s set and meeting Toro y Moi.
A great live show needs two things. The right friends and and the right music. And Friday at Folsom might just top any other show I’ve ever been to. Not only is Snakehips headlining, but FKJ is playing his debut live set!
I’ve only ever written about a show once before solely to get more people to go. This is my second attempt. And I’m MUCH more excited about this one.
Only a few people I go to the club with regularly would know how much I love to dance. But only if the right friends and music are there and the two usually don’t come together often.
Many great producers are not as great live. It’s a whole different game. Something I know FKJ excels at and I’m pretty damn confident Snakehips will too. Both are making the best dance music today, and I don’t say that lightly.
Just see for yourself.
– Make sure to dance
– Even if it’s on your seat
Touch Sensitive always helps make an entrance. Whether it was Le Youth at the Rickshaw last year or Flight Facilities at the Regency a week ago, I always walk in when he’s playing his best on the bass. And he always makes me feel like a badass while doing it (which doesn’t happen much).
I did wonder how much of his set was script and how much he winged it, but I don’t think I made that too clear on Twitter. Thanks Touch for indulging in my drunkin ramblings.
The same styles of EDM from last year seemed to dominate Beyond Wonderland this year. Mainly progressive house and various forms of bass music. I like a lot of both, but this mainstream shit sounds so manufactured. It’s like old people buying into infomercials, but at least they have an excuse (they’re old).
I know I sound like the typical music blogger bitchin about the mainstream, but I bring it up so someone will help me understand why people settle for this shit. There are just so many better alternatives. And a few were actually on side stages at Beyond. I guess the lack of awareness is the biggest problem.
So every year, since last year, we’ve put together a list of our favorite EDM tracks for Beyond. Since we’ve already covered house this year with our tropical house & deep house playlists, we decided to go for bass.
It does include deep house & electro funk, but we tried to highlight as much glitch & lazers & shit as possible. Just remember, bass is more for the feeling & dance than for the sound.
I taught a friend a new word this week. I thought it summed up Outside Lands pretty well and most festivals in general. It’s got a negative connotation to it, but a TA at my University once defined himself as a hedonist and at the time it sounded like the most honest look at one’s life I had ever heard. I don’t mean it in its extreme, as it’s often taken, but to some extent it’s what most festivals are in the business for, the senses.
Last year I heard Insomniac was taking its Wonderland festival and bringing it to The Bay. The thing I remember most when looking into Beyond was that Insomniac was trying to create a festival so visually & audibly stimulating there was no need to rely on ecstasy or LSD. As you can imagine, I was pretty eager to find out how well they pulled it off both personally as well as for other attendees. And as much as I can’t speak for them, though some of the pictures can, I will speak a little on my own account.
Visually, everything was pretty enchanting my two nights there, but during the day the drabness of the Shoreline Amphitheater seeped through. Much of the crowd was dressed in full fantasy and really made the scene more than anything. But where as the visuals were decent, the music faltered.
Some of the night acts, namely Zeds Dead & WhiteNoize, were a helluva time, but the music that played most of the day can best be described by one song, the dirty bit version of ‘Time’ by The Black Eyed Peas. In other words, once the beat dropped everything went to shit […]
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Outside Lands is held inside Golden Gate Park in San Fran and just hit its sixth year running. This was my second go around and both years have held a similar mystique.
The days consist of haze filled skies with a backdrop of what appears to be a misty rainforest, when in fact we’re right smack dab in SF. Each taste of San Francisco subculture is scattered about with accompanying styles of food (love the food). Nights seem to hit sometime around the last act and a certain strange mood fills the air – which in part is brought on by the sunny hazed days mixed with alcohol and the aroma of drugs around you.
I may not experience a festival like this in its pure happiness form that many try for, but I do get a lot out of it. Best described, it’s an unfiltered experience of today’s San Francisco lifestyles all bottled up in one big city park.
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This is not a promotion for Le Youth & Touch Sensitive at the Rickshaw this Thursday, July 18 (well that was). But really I could care less who’s going, except for the few people I know here in the Bay Area who are somewhat into this style.
Unfortunately like most people though, including myself, they’re lazy as fuck. You tell them there’s a show this Thursday with producers who are defining the future of disco, funk & soul and all of them coincidentally are working at the butt crack of 7am the next day.
Well, I call bullshit. Not that they’re bullshitting me, but they sure as hell are bullshitting themselves. To choose a good nights rest over an experience our children would have killed to go see, like us and our envy of 60’s culture, is simply a shame and I won’t have it!
So here’s my second attempt at getting these lazy fucks off their ass for a good show in SF. For the rest of you, enjoy a mix of Le Youth & Touch Sensitive’s best. If you are going to the show in San Francisco, let me know in the comments below. First drinks on me.
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Outside Lands 2012 was an odd affair in a city forest. The music had a sharp range of talent, the food… oh god, the food was sogood and the people were quite pleasant & interesting to talk to. OsL did have its drawbacks though- it was cold as hell, dirty as shit & a trek to get to, but one thing especially bothered me that could’ve turned this massive music fest into a whole ‘nother experience from any other and it just so happens to be what its city & the Bay Area are known for, technology.
Outside Lands takes us back to the beauty of nature and feels more like a party on Safari than in the middle of San Fran, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t try to innovative on what a festival means, especially considering where it’s held. Since the technology capital of the world is right in its backyard, OsL needs to use that to its advantage to become a festival like no other. Not only would a better adoption with technology, especially anything social, help its name spread much farther & deeper across the web, but more importantly revolutionize the music festival experience. From advances in technological art to better socializing the whole festival experience – if OsL doesn’t do it now, they’ll have to do it later, but with many other festivals far ahead of it.
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