Look how fucking magical this place is.
Now if you’ve never had the good fortune to step into the Rothbury grounds, then I’ll let you know it’s filled with some of the funkiest, happiest, and trippiest people you’ll ever meet and some of the craziest things you’ll ever see in any altered state of consciousness. No festival does it like Rothbury, and I have to say that I have never raged with so many fucking awesome people in my entire life; the vibe of the whole festival was out of this world, as made evident by the smiles permanently glued on everyone’s faces. The lineup was a fusion of electronic music, reggae, hip-hop, backed by headliners like the String Cheese Incident, Stephen Marley, and Tiesto. With bands like Rubblebucket, Zion I and the Grouch, the New Deal, Paper Diamond, Break Science, Two Fresh, ESKMO, Pretty Lights, Conspirator, EOTO, there was more than music to try and catch. If you want to check out the line-up, swing by the Electric Forest website.
If I have one complaint to make, it was the scheduling. If I ever meet the person who came up with that schedule, I will fucking slap them. I know it sounds a bit harsh, but anyone who makes me choose between Big Gigantic, Bassnectar, Lotus, ESKMO, and Porter Robinson needs to be re-assigned to cleaning out the shitters. Crammed scheduling compounded with the fact that I never received a single schedule (they failed to print enough and had to ground-score one) made it overly difficult to see some of the biggest acts I drove 16 hours to see.
But enough with the negative vibes, the whole festy was amazing, and I’m going to try and hit you all with some of the more electronic highlights of the weekend. There was truly too much great music to talk about
Excision started the night off, after a raging thunderstorm, absolutely slayed it, showing everyone that a whole lot of water wasn’t going to put out the Rage.
Excision & Downlink – Existence VIP
The sky raged as hard as crowd, and goddamn am I glad he opened with something that sampled fire, because I was freezing my ass off in the rain for 3 hours. I saw a lot of frowns leaving the festival, because I basically people-watched for entirety of the storm, and after Excision’s set, I saw a WHOLE LOT OF SMILES.
(Now, in my best British accent) I had the good pleasure of watching Feed Me perform.
By that I mean, he raged my fucking face off, but I feel like I have to be to try and be courtly about it, because this dude seriously sounded like a British gentleman.
I just happened to learn Feed Me is also the UK DnB producer Spor. The dude ran 4 CDJs, no laptop, and mixed up a storm of dubstep, house, and heavy electro seamlessly, while entertaining the fuck out the crowd, and getting more into than anybody. I have to say it, he made Skrillex look like a chump, but not really because Feed Me gave props by dropping that Skrillex sound real hard. Whole lot of Promises.
Feed Me – Cloudburn ft. Tasha Baxter
Noisa – Machine Gun (Spor Remix)
Expect more installments on the music featured @EF this summer, but right now it’s almost 2:oo am, and I’m on my way to Camp Bisco X, for more ragin’. Stay tuned for an review on the madness of Camp.
Rage Safe, One Love
[P.S. Stay tuned later today for new Evidence mixes by Laidback Luke and Alvin Risk in today’s Finally Friday Special!]