News / seasonal
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1 min read
Weekend two is the one that actually matters
Read more . . . →Weekend one wrapped yesterday and your feed is already unbearable, full of drone shots and people crying at the mainstage like they invented feelings. Fine. But everyone who actually knows Tomorrowland knows the second weekend is the better one. The DJs have shaken off the rust, the crowd skews more heads and fewer influencers doing a bit for the camera, and the set that flopped on Friday the 17th gets quietly fixed by Friday the 24th. Boom, Belgium goes again this Friday, and here are the five tracks I want the mainstage to earn. 1. Hardwell - Spaceman Hardwell headlines...
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1 min read
It's here. Tomorrowland weekend one opens today.
Read more . . . →This is it. Weekend one opens today, David Guetta and Martin Garrix and Calvin Harris are somewhere over Belgium right now, and 200,000 people are about to pretend they didn’t pay a fortune to stand in a field. Say what you want about Tomorrowland, the mainstage singalong at golden hour is a real thing that does real damage to whatever cynicism you showed up with. Three tracks built for exactly the moment when the whole field sings the same line back. 1. Axwell Λ Ingrosso - More Than You Know Two-thirds of Swedish House Mafia in their solo years, and...
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1 min read
There's an Avicii tribute at Tomorrowland this year and I'm not ready
Read more . . . →Quick heads up before the gates open: this year’s Tomorrowland includes an Avicii tribute, and if you were anywhere near dance music between 2011 and 2018 you already know why that lands hard. Tim Bergling more or less wrote the sound the mainstage still runs on, then he was gone at 28. The festival that helped build him is giving a whole moment back to him. Four tracks to have loaded before you’re standing in that field with everyone else. 1. Avicii - Levels The one that started it. An Etta James sample looped over a piano line so simple...
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1 min read
Tomorrowland is in Belgium and the locals still run the place
Read more . . . →Reminder that Tomorrowland happens in Boom, a Belgian town of about 18,000 that swells to festival-sized every July and then goes quiet again. The polite thing is to respect the home team, and Belgium’s dance roster punches so far above the country’s weight it’s almost unfair. Four locals worth your time, running from radio-friendly to genuinely frightening. 1. Lost Frequencies - Are You With Me Felix De Laet was still a teenager when this became the first Belgian track to top the UK singles chart. It’s a country sample turned into a sunset anthem, and it should be corny, but...
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1 min read
The one genuinely new thing at Tomorrowland this year
Read more . . . →Here’s the actual news out of this year’s lineup, buried under the headliner circus: on opening Friday, Tomorrowland is running its first full afro house day at the Melodia stage. Not one token DJ shoved into an afternoon slot, a whole bill of South African producers who’ve spent years turning drum patterns into something closer to church. If you only know this festival as big-room fireworks, this is the corner worth walking to. 1. Caiiro - The Akan Caiiro builds tracks like they’re supposed to run twenty minutes, and you resent it when they don’t. The Akan is all rolling...
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1 min read
Tomorrowland turns 20 and the hype is insufferable and mostly earned
Read more . . . →Four days out and my feeds are 90% people you’ll never see again posting the same drone shot of the mainstage. Tomorrowland hits its 20th edition this year, they’ve branded it Consciencia, and yes, most of it is a very expensive Instagram backdrop with a castle stuck on top. But the thing didn’t get this big on nothing. Five tracks that will actually go off in Boom and won’t make you feel stupid for humming them on the flight home. 1. Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike vs Ummet Ozcan - The Hum The Belgian duo are basically Tomorrowland’s house band,...
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1 min read
Five days to Tomorrowland: the anthems doing laps in your head
Read more . . . →Five days out. This is the part of the run-up where the packing lists appear and the Mainstage anthems start doing laps in your head at 3am. Two records built for the exact moment the fireworks go off over the castle: 1. Hardwell - Spaceman The 2012 anthem that basically invented the modern Tomorrowland mainstage drop. That siren lead is pure adrenaline and the build is engineered to launch an entire field off the ground on the same beat. Hardwell is back on the bill this year stepping in for Guetta on the second Friday, and this is the one...
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1 min read
The Tomorrowland bass stages exist to rearrange your organs
Read more . . . →Six days. For everyone convinced Tomorrowland is all euphoric hands-in-the-air stuff, the bass stages exist to rearrange your internal organs. This is the corner of the festival with the fewest phones out and the most damage done to necks and knees: 1. REZZ - Edge The goggles, the hypnosis-spiral visuals, the mid-tempo dread. REZZ built a whole world and this is a clean way into it. It sits around 110bpm and hits harder than tracks running twice the speed. Nobody else on a mainstage-level bill sounds remotely like her, and that’s the point. 2. GRiZ & Subtronics - Griztronics Two...
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1 min read
Trance is unfashionable and the A State of Trance crowd doesn't care
Read more . . . →A week out now. A State of Trance gets its own stage at Tomorrowland because Armin van Buuren is essentially a Belgian national monument at this point. Trance has been deeply out of fashion for years and its crowd could not care less, which is honestly the most punk thing about the whole festival. Two for the faithful: 1. Armin van Buuren - Blah Blah Blah Armin trolling the purists with a big-room stomper named after exactly what the snobs say about his commercial stuff. The joke is that it goes off harder than most of the “serious” records, and...
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1 min read
The dark Tomorrowland tents where you lose track of time
Read more . . . →Eight days out. There’s a whole side of Tomorrowland that trades drops for hypnosis. The melodic techno rooms, where the point is to lose track of time entirely and wander out at sunrise wondering what happened. Mind Against are on the bill this year, so here’s a run through the sound they came up in: 1. Mind Against - Walking Away The Afterlife aesthetic in one track: patient, cold, gorgeous. It takes almost three minutes to fully arrive and every second of that build earns it. This is 4am music, played to a room that has stopped checking the time....
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