By Andrea Domanick
Just when you think there were no stops left for EDC to pull out, festival organizers Insomniac kicked the dance music celebration up a notch for its third year in Vegas. This year features more than 500 DJs and theatrical performers, seven stages, eight art cars, three graffiti walls and an endless array of carnival rides, light shows and pyrotechnics. Here’s a closer look at what’s new:
1. The Kinetic Field The largest of EDC’s seven stages, the Kinetic Field was expanded this year from a capacity of 55,000 to 80,000 people. Moreover, Insomniac scrapped the traditional caging-and-LED-screens set up in favor of a stage paneling that looks cribbed from the mind of Lewis Carroll, including enormous day-glo toadstools and daisies and a 100-foot-tall animatronic owl enshrouding the central DJ booth.
2. The Basscon stage EDC’s newest stage was introduced this year to further diversify the dance music subgenres represented at the festival, with Basscon catering to the “hard” genres of dance music with heavy basslines and relentless beats like Hard Techno, Hard House and Hardstyle. The stage’s set-up matched the intensity of music, featuring a dystopian steampunk backdrop of a gas-masked figure clutching daisies while looming over a rusted clock. Conceptual enough for you?