Let me just begin by saying that if you’re in and around the most polluted city in the world and bursting firecrackers, then you’re an insensitive prick of the highest order. More than that, bursting firecrackers is just wrong. And if you are bringing one of the biggest electronic music festivals in the world to the most polluted city in the world then you better not be bursting firecrackers. But no, that’s not how the organisers of the Electric Daisy Carnival (EDC) roll. The organisers and the sponsors should’ve paid heed to this little detail because they undid what turned out to be one hell of a show. EDC India was a show like no other. It was grandiose to say the least and for the part very well organised. You had ATMs working despite the demonetisation and lack of currency bills, you had beautiful stages, you had good food available and you had a slice of the digital future too as the bar were not only accepting credit cards, but you could also pay through PayTM. And amazingly, this was perhaps the first music festival I had attended in a long time where I could get through to my friends.
Food Talk India, which is a start-up that has a booming community on Facebook, is essentially a social network for good food, that had setup a curated area with Budweiser where it had celebrity chef Kevin Cheung from Mumbai curating delectable burgers.
But all this is arbitrary; EDC is about the showcase of electronic music, a genre of music which has become very popular in New Delhi. And, a show it was.
EDC India was divided into three stages - the Kineticfield which catered to mostly an EDM crowd, CircuitGrounds - which catered to progressive, bass heavy folks. While Neon Garden was for Psy patrons and mostly had deep house and techno acts.
And you basically had one of the best festival line-ups one could’ve ever hoped for with a good mix of international acts and local homegrown talent. On day 1, we had headliners like Alesso, Ferry Corsten and Delhi’s own Blot!. This was a big affair.
I mostly spent my time at the Neon Garden’s stage which was full of techno and deep house acts. When I did stray off to the other stages. I noticed that the main KinecticField stage was a step up in terms of scale and was easily the most elaborate and pretty stage I had seen at a music festival in India. On day one, it had the likes of Tommy Trash play, whose music I am not particularly fond of, but it was easy to see the crowd for having a hell of a time.
I also went to the CircuitField, which had the likes of Markus Schulz and Vini Vici playing. They played impressive sets, which were sonically intelligent and had great grooves.
But on day one, I mostly spent time at the Neon Garden and there I found Sand Dunes to be quite underwhelming, however, Praveen Achary stepped things up and brought life to a stage which was mostly deserted. The cherry on the topping was BLOT! who is by far the most popular deep house techno act in Delhi and he took things to a different level. It was a typical BLOT! set, which involved long build ups, dreamy melodies, and uplifting grooves meshed with elements of dissonance. For me, it was clearly the highlight of day 1 along with Vini Vici’s set.
Post the main event, the after party also had many Delhi regulars manning the decks which included Hoax, Anish Sood with DJ Mo City chiming in. It was mostly a deep house and techno affair and the crowd seemed to be quite engaged.
Day 2 was different from the get-go. I arrived much later, which meant that I missed out some of the earlier acts like Dualist Inquiry on KineticFields, Sound Avtar on CircuitFields and SHFT on Neon Gardens.
By the time I arrived, Ozzeundat was playing his set on the Neon Gardens stage and already there were as many people as there was the night before during BLOT!’s closing set. The set of the festival according to me came after Ozzundat’s. It was by Kohra - a mind-bending dark melodic swirl of techno which just kept you grooving. Kohra had brought his A game and the entire stage was already packed by 7PM.
Pearl took over reigns of the deck at the Neon Gardens and initially she killed the groovy techno vibe, but soon she got a different kind of a vibe going which kept the crowd on its toes, including her hubby Nikhil Chinapa. The stage was closed off by Indian industrial techno legend Arjun Vagale who played a set which can be closely associated with a head rush as the entire crowd was jumping and by the end of it was in splits.
To sum it up, EDC India was musically intelligent and grand for the part. It was very well organised and lived up to the brand identity the festival is known for the world over. That being said, the fact that firecrackers, specifically aerial shots were burst in Delhi at a time when the city was suffering from a major pollution crisis shows the insensitive attitude of the organisers, which doesn’t bode well. Hopefully, this holier than thou attitude will change next year.
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