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 that riff is already stuck in your head. He knows. He’s laughing all the way to the mainstage.
2. Vini Vici - Great Spirit
Psytrance that crossed over to the mainstage, which shouldn’t work and completely does. That rubber-band bassline at 140bpm is hypnotic, and when it drops at the festival the whole field turns into one organism. Weird, tribal, unstoppable.
Hands up. No irony required.