10/02/2025 12:45 AM

Fatpierecords-Art

Art Is Experience

Electric Daisy Carnival Las Vegas 2021: reflections from a first-timer

1. Obtaining there. Electrical Daisy Carnival Night 2 commences prolonged right before I set foot at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. As we creep together in two-hour targeted traffic, cars in just about every lane have anything going on. Some generate impatiently on the shoulder. Many others shuttle frilly pageant goers who head-bang to EDM as their buddies crane their necks (and significantly less-clothed system areas) out the windows. The get together has started out. It is just a make any difference of when we’ll get to experience it.

Just after all that, parking is astonishingly easy. Workers guidebook motor vehicles into exact spots on the rocky unpaved large amount. We’re eventually below.

2. Acquiring in. The festival’s COVID plan involves proof of vaccination or a unfavorable COVID examination administered no much more than 72 hrs prior to entering. It’s impressive to see not one particular checkpoint but three. The initial requires vaccine verification: Protection comprehensively seems at our actual physical IDs with every single card, anything I haven’t noticed at other Las Vegas-dependent fests this year. The future spot scans attendees’ wristbands, and at the following, security guards check out luggage and, in some cases, bodies. 

3. Behold! You will find no preparing for seeing the festival grounds for the initial time. Very first publicity arrives from the best of the Speedway bleachers, built for folks to observe NASCAR. The sweeping watch introduces a kaleidoscopic wonderland. A refined thumping can be heard. It is the heartbeat of the competition by itself, enlivened by many EDM sets taking place at once. Practically nothing aesthetically compares to EDC. It’s a carnival of color—blues, purples, reds and yellows spritely glowing in the center of a desert. Other than that it’s actually tough to imagine you are in the middle of a desert.

4. The group. My coworker and I are asking yourself how a lot of of these 100,000-plus attendees are style designers, prop masters or stylists. The level of element they’ve set into their outfits, make-up and totems is worthy of an outlandish carny film established to develop into a cult common. There are tutus, eerie clowns in demented make-up, fishnet bodysuits, rainbow braids prolonged and sturdy more than enough to rescue a kitten from a tree, jewels adorning cheeks and eyes, diamond headdresses, 3D eyeglasses for a 2D DJ established and a fully-electronic totem with the Squid Recreation robotic woman. EDC, man.

5. The grounds. There is no scarcity of things to do here. A massive Ferris wheel whirls in the distance. Festivalgoers scream as they linger upside down on a hammerhead-like ride. It is truly carnival. Modest activations like Tokyo Karaoke and the Mini Bar offer fun, personal mini-functions, wedding ceremony chapels let adore birds to tie the electric knot and the Pixel Forest assaults the physique with a barrage of bass you’d hardly ever assume.

6. The tunes. Kinetic Field is just one of the greatest phases at the grounds, and it’s very easily the most outstanding and scary. A gigantic owl guards the stage, switching from purple to red and blue, turning its head, blinking its eyes. It is seeing you. But we’re looking at two explosive sets by legendary DJs Alan Walker and Tiësto. Fireplace cannons blast off, fireworks shower down and EDM lifts people up. The crush of bodies move in, but they’re so content we just cannot even fault them.

We meander more than to the Cosmic Meadow stage, in which Diplo and surprise visitor Lil Nas X just done. Chicago duo Louis the Little one choose the phase, and we move forward to never ever halt transferring. They bounce—literally—from the decks the entire time, under no circumstances tiring or expanding weary as they accomplish a gorgeous set of electronic pop. At one particular point, there’s a flub in the mixing. The music stops, but that gives a comforting sign that whatever they are carrying out up there is stay, and which is awesome. I’d never heard the DJ duo in advance of, but they’ve acquired a lover. 

That’s the elegance of this competition. There is so considerably to see, so considerably to hear. If you arrived with no new music recommendations at all, you are not leaving without having some.