Not everyone at Tomorrowland wants their organs rearranged. Some people wander off to the melodic and progressive stages, order a beer, and let something with actual chords wash over them for an hour. This is the part of the festival nobody films, because a slow filter build doesn’t play well as a nine-second clip, and that’s precisely why it’s worth being there. Weekend two opens in two days. Here’s the quieter lane.
1. Above & Beyond feat. Richard Bedford - Sun & Moon
Fifteen years on and this still makes trance skeptics go quiet. The Richard Bedford vocal does most of the emotional lifting, but it’s the way the pads swell under the second chorus that gets people. I’ve watched cynics pretend to check their phone so nobody clocks them tearing up.
2. Lane 8 - Brightest Lights feat. POLIÇA
Lane 8’s whole thing is restraint, and this is his best argument for it. The POLIÇA vocal gets chopped into something that sounds like a memory you can’t quite place, and the drop, if you can even call it that, is just a groove tightening by degrees. Headphones at 2am music that somehow also works at a festival.
3. Lane 8 & Yotto - I/Y
Two Anjuna-adjacent heavyweights in a room together, and instead of showing off they made something patient and warm. The bassline just walks, never sprints, and about halfway through a single synth line lifts the whole thing off the ground. This is what people mean when they say “sunrise set.”
4. Ben Böhmer - Beyond Beliefs
Böhmer writes dance music for people who cry at films, and I mean that as the highest compliment. The strings here are almost too much, right up until the beat drops in and justifies every one of them. Play it once and you understand why his Cercle sets pull ten million views.
Skip one mainstage headliner and go find the tent with the beanbags. You’ll last longer.