News / seasonal
-
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...
Subscribe →Weekly digestOne email per week with the tracks worth your time. No spam, no Coldplay. -
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,...
Subscribe →Weekly digestSundays. One email. Zero ballads from white guys in beanies. -
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...
Subscribe →Weekly digestWhat you missed this week, minus the corporate emo. -
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...
Get the tee →Support the blogSome shirts are statements. This one is a verdict. -
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...
Get the tee →Support the blogMade for people who left the room during Yellow. -
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....
Get the tee →Support the blogIf you wear this and someone hugs you, that's a real friend. -
1 min read
The Tomorrowland tents where the actual dancing happens
Read more . . . →Nine days out. Not everything at Tomorrowland is fireworks and confetti cannons. The tech house tents are where the real dancing happens, no pyro required, and they’ll be rammed all weekend. Two names that’ll have people sweating through their shirts at 2am: 1. Fisher - You Little Beauty The follow-up to Losing It, and arguably the better track. That bouncing bassline is criminally simple and the vocal loop worms into your skull inside eight bars. This is the whole Fisher method: nothing clever, everything built to make a room move in unison. 2. James Hype - Ferrari The mixing-desk wizard...
Get the tee →Support the blogLooks like Helvetica. Sounds like a closing argument. -
1 min read
Calvin Harris headlines Tomorrowland and the man just prints money
Read more . . . →Ten days out, and Calvin Harris is one of three names holding down the Mainstage for opening weekend. Somewhere along the way the skinny Scottish kid who made “Acceptable in the 80s” became the highest-paid DJ alive and started writing pop songs for anyone with a pulse. His Tomorrowland set is basically a greatest-hits victory lap. Three that’ll show up: 1. Calvin Harris, Rihanna - This Is What You Came For Built on about four notes and unbeatable because of it. The restraint is the trick. The whole track is tension waiting for a chorus that barely arrives, and Rihanna...
Get the tee →Support the blogThree words. One opinion. Cotton. -
1 min read
Tomorrowland is 11 days out and the internet has lost its mind
Read more . . . →Tomorrowland kicks off in Boom in eleven days, and the internet has already decided it’s the greatest thing to ever happen to a Belgian field. Two weekends, sixteen stages, five hundred names, one castle-shaped mainstage that costs more than most people’s houses. You don’t need a €500 ticket to hear the tracks that’ll actually run the place, though. Here’s the pre-game: the songs the Mainstage will lean on before Guetta pretends he built them from scratch. 1. Martin Garrix - Animals The one that turned a Dutch teenager into a headliner. That three-note lead still detonates a crowd on contact,...
Get the tee →Support the blogWhat if your laundry was also a personality? -
1 min read
Defqon.1 is this week and the labels just emptied the armory
Read more . . . →Gates open at Biddinghuizen this week and the release schedule clearly knows it. Every label with a stake in the weekend dumped its heaviest stuff in the last few days, so right now your feed is about 90% kick drums and a guy screaming about a sacred oath. Here’s what actually clawed its way out of that pile: five fresh drops that’ll go off in the field before the anthem even hits. 1. Adaro & Unresolved - Original Gangsters (Raw and Mean) Two rawstyle lifers who somehow never made a track together until last week. It’s exactly what “no hypes,...
Get the tee →Support the blogShips in 3–5 days. The outrage ships immediately.
