There was a mysterious illumination radiating from the middle of the opaque Death Valley this weekend. Upon closer inspection, it proved to be millions of lights: multicolored, brilliant, spinning, energized and mesmerizing lights. It was a celebration of unparalleled proportion, a festival charged with a pulse of electrifying music and dancing livelihood of more than 350,000 attendees. Welcome to Electric Daisy Carnival 2013.
Brought to life by Pasquale Rotella, the visionary CEO of nightlife flagship company Insomniac Events, EDC made its third trip to the Las Vegas Speedway from Friday to Sunday. The event hosted record-breaking numbers of eager electronic music fans from dusk until dawn.
The event opened its doors each day of the weekend at 7 p.m. and closed around 5:30 a.m., and it featured seven massive stage areas decked with custom architecture, such as an enormous canopy of multicolored lights, pyrotechnic canons, strobe lights, smoke, lasers and LED screens.
Attendees also enjoyed 20 interactive art installations, such as a 3-D light tunnel, color-changing hopscotch field, intricate graffiti walls and fire-spewing daisy sculptures. There were also numerous carnival rides, cool-off zones, snack shacks and thousands of quirky, entrancing performers, acrobats, dancers and stilt-walkers.
The sound system at each stage provided carnival goers with incredible, bone-vibrating volume as they enjoyed talents of various electronic music artists. The extensive lineup boasted 500 artists including well-established electronic dance music acts, such as Knife Party, Kill the Noise and Krewella, as well as up-and-coming artists like Singularity and Rotella’s own creative piece, the Night Owl Experience.
Some highlight acts of this year’s event included dubstep darling Skrillex and electro-act Boyz Noize’s collaboration, Dogblood, as well as Dillion Francis, Major Lazer and Rusko.
However, the most amazing aspect of EDC is the pure, joyous energy that is the foundation of the event. It is not relative to age, ethnicity, religion, orientation or appearance. The audience of EDC is what makes this weekend spectacular.
The diversity amid the crowd and subsequent acceptance is what makes the festival so special. In handmade costumes and beaded jewelry, the unique festivalgoers are the true headliners, as Insomniac often denotes in its media advertisements.
The overall atmosphere is one of childlike elation as people skip through the crowd, hand in hand, pausing to watch a stunning display of fireworks or dance together in shared freedom. In this unique blend of a concert, festival and party, Insomniac has created a haven for electronic music fans to engage their passions, inspire their creativity and commune with their kind in harmonious celebration.
Whether your preference is dubstep, hardstyle, drum and bass, trance, electro, house or any other kind of electronic music, there truly is something for everyone at EDC.
Above all, there is an air of love that seems to bring together the diversified crowd. Whether you are falling for the first time or reinvigorating a long-standing romance, celebrating with old friends or making new ones, EDC is a place of hope and unity, where it doesn’t matter where you come from, so long as you arrive with an open heart and mind. EDC is meant to be a place where anything is possible, and typical limitations are set aside in favor of boundless possibility and the pervading power of love.
In fact, this year included the addition of a Viva Las Vegas style wedding chapel where concertgoers could renew vows or promise anew. Rotella even proposed to girlfriend and ex-playmate, Holly Madison, atop one of the three ferris wheels at the festival while the couple’s newborn daughter, Rainbow, was safely cared for in a custom-built baby castle backstage.
People from around the world gathered to experience the incredible vivacity of this event, releasing themselves from the constraints of daily life, disassociating from all identifiers that divide them and indulging in their dreams. Insomniac did more than put on a concert; it created a world based on freedom, happiness and acceptance where ordinary people became a beautiful and integral part of something bigger than themselves: a movement of music, art and life.