Fuck Yeah Friday!: Electric Zoo Wrap-Up

Electric Zoo Day 2, Main Stage with David Guetta

So that's it, another summer festival season has come to an end. I'd say I had a pretty good run, attending three EDM festivals in Ultra Music Festival, Identity Festival, and Electric Zoo. Each one has its highlights, its low lights, and stories tied to it, but I'll leave those for another time.

Electric Zoo was pretty spectacular this year. Although I attended last year, I did not have a full appreciation of the artists who were there at the time (including Wolfgang Gartner, Axwell, Chuckie, Avicii, Pete Tong, Chris Lake, Funkagenda, etc). So I could definitely sense some missing acts this year after a full year of daily EDM under my belt. And that's not to say EZoo '11 didn't have its fair share of awesome acts - I was kept busy over the three days and constantly had to make choices like who should I see at which particular time and what kind of mood I was in as far as EDM sub-genres go. I'll try to keep this post brief and post the highlights from each day as well as 5 tracks to take away from the weekend.

Day 1 highlights: Bart B More (my first time seeing him, he played bangers as expected), Joris Voorn & Nic Fanciulli (got my dose of minimal/tech-house), Feed Me, Rusko, Moby, Tiesto. Moby was the biggest surprise, Rusko was exactly as awesome as expected, and Tiesto disappointed (relatively speaking - I had high hopes for him, but he stuck to his Tiesto roots).

Day 2 highlights: Day 2 was a little thin and there were some acts I wish I got to see, like Sub Focus, Sander Van Doorn, Mat Zo, and Beardyman, but this was all solved by Porter Robinson, who I think was the MVP of the whole weekend. He played nothing but bangers and his DJ skills have improved immensely. Skrillex and Above & Beyond were other notable performances, but Skrillex's sound was way off for the first half of the set.

Day 3 highlights: this was the mother load and due to circumstances I don't want to explain, we missed a lot of the sets we wanted to see. For the ones we DID get to, highlights include Calvin Harris, Fake Blood, Michael Woods, Jack Beats, Diplo (chose to see him instead of Afrojack), Boys Noize, and the last half hour of an epic Armin Van Buuren set.

The song of the weekend was easily "The Calling" by Sebastian Ingrosso & Alesso, those fucking Swedes. Here are some of the key take-aways from the weekend:



Sebastian Ingrosso & Alesso Calling

Dirty South & Thomas Gold ft. Kate Elsworth Alive (Original Mix)

Michael Woods VMS (Original Mix)

James Blake Limit To Your Love (Benny Benassi Remix)

Mr Blink Gecko (Burns' Start-Stop Remix)
(as played by Boys Noize)

For an extended amount of sets recorded live from EZoo '11, follow this link HERE