Last weekend, fans from all over the world gathered at Randall’s Island to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Electric Zoo. With such a huge milestone accomplishment, you just knew the festival wouldn’t disappoint with their roster of talent.
In years past, Electric Zoo was known for their creative main stage designs to match the “Zoo” theme. Many fans anticipated a gorilla shaped stage or even a lion. But to the disappointment of many (or so they thought), this year’s mainstage was a much simpler three LED screened stage. But as soon as nightfall hit, the stage lit up with immaculate visuals that made fans forget all about previous animal stages. Artists such as Virtual Self, who are well known for their use of visuals, blew the crowd away with their incredible presentation.
Another MAJOR improvement this year was the super quick will call lines. Like me, many festival attendees procrastinate with their ticket purchases and this often results in tickets need to be picked up at will call on festival grounds. In previous years, attendees complained that the procedure took hours due to long lines which led to people missing their favorite artists’ performances. This year, however, the festival added a new procedure by requiring attendees to print out a voucher with a barcode. The barcode was quickly scanned at will call where the receptionist would then immediately trade in your voucher for your ticket bracelet. This sped up the entire process immensely and eliminated the long lines that everyone hated so much.
Being that it is the festival’s 10 year anniversary, everyone expected a killer line up ring in the celebration. The talent this year, surely didn’t disappoint with major acts from almost every genre of dance music but the fans that were most pleased was definitely the trance family. On the final day, Electric Zoo hosted an Anjunabeats stage and invited some of the biggest trance stars in the world to perform. The most special performance of all belonged to the closing set where Ilan Bluestone, Andrew Bayer and Jason Ross took the stage for a very special B2B2B set. To make the night even more special, each artist even had their own individual performance at the stage leading up to the big finale. To top of the unbelievable night of trance, Audien, Gabriel & Dresden, Spencer Brown and Mike Saint-Jules all played immaculate sets at the Anjunabeats stage as well.
