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Headliners for 2024 will include Forest legend Pretty Lights, the bone-rattling sounds of Excision, and Cyclops Recordings founder Subtronics. A variety of rare collaborative artist sets are also on deck, including EVERYTHING ALWAYS (Dom Dolla + John Summit), PSYREN (CloZee + LSDREAM), and Big Gigantic and NGHTMRE teaming up for their Gigantic NGHTMRE project.

Jam fans can rejoice as The String Cheese Incident returns to perform two Incidents, plus sets from fellow torchbearers of the genre The Disco Biscuits and Umphrey’s McGee. Some of the more unexpected names on the lineup include Grammy-winning singer Nelly Furtado and famed Atlanta hip-hop artist Ludacris, each bringing their iconic sounds to Electric Forest next year. The list of headliners is rounded out by Belgian techno queen Charlotte de Witte, a solo set from John Summit, and performances by Black Tiger Sex Machine, Ben Böhmer, and Knock2.

Additional house and techno favorites on the lineup include Mau P, LP Giobbi, DJ Tennis, Sultan + Shepard, TSHA, and Coco & Breezy, while heavier sounds will come courtesy of Chase & Status, Barclay Crenshaw, ATLiens, Wooli, and Alison Wonderland’s new project Whyte Fang. The 2024 lineup also showcases a variety of live acts with their own electronic influences, featuring performances by Cannons, NEIL FRANCES, and DRAMA. More artists will continue to be announced leading up to the festival.

Applications are now open for The Wish Machine, which remains one of the ultimate personifications of the festival’s community-driven ethos. The program calls on Forest Family to dream up their ultimate Electric Forest fantasy prize to submit alongside an act of good they will commit to doing in their community if selected. The program has generated over 7,500 inspiring commitments through the years, resulting in donations to humanitarian efforts, the creation of a mental health support group, various community clean-up and improvement projects, and more while granting wishes ranging from a slot on the lineup to private artist performances.

The post The Electric Forest 2024 Lineup Is Here appeared first on EDMTunes.

Geez Pasquale Rotella has been absolutely killing the festival game lately. We already know that EDC Vegas sells out before the lineup is even announced, but even Insomniac‘s smaller and newer festivals are selling out quickly. The first ever Dreamstate festival in California sold out in a shockingly quick time, and now the vibe-tastic Electric Forest is already sold out for 2016 as well (also without a lineup announcement).

The festival tweeted out earlier today that only 1000 tickets remained for this year’s event, which doesn’t tale place until after EDC Vegas 2016. That’s really impressive and a record for the event. Those of you lucky enough to get a ticket 6 months in advance are in for a real treat this summer. For the rest of you, there’s still EDC Vegas and Ultra Music Festival available.

The post Electric Forest 2016 Sells Out in Record Time appeared first on EDMTunes.

This year’s Electric Forest is now gone and behind us, and now that the dust from the Double JJ Ranch has finally settled and washed away, we can at last take a moment to highlight some of the winners and losers from this year’s festival. While this would be my second year attending Insomniac and Madison House Presents’ electronica meets jam-band soiree, my fellow writer David Margulis would be entering this journey a Forest virgin. As such, the following highs and lows are a product of both of our experiences.

HIGHS

The String Cheese Incident
CHEEEEESSSSSEEEEE. Simply put, the best vibes, atmosphere, and energy from the festival could be found whenever the String Cheese Incident was playing. Everybody in the crowd was just having too much fun, and in all honesty, to try and put that experience into words simply doesn’t do it justice. While at the end of the day we are EDM fans at heart, it was impossible to leave those sets without understanding the joy that was ever present in their fan base. It also didn’t hurt that Skrillex came out and surprised the crowd by jamming out with SCI for a good 15 minutes.

Techno and Tech House
While the lineup for Electric Forest had a heavy focus on the jam bands and mainstream EDM acts, it certainly did not fear venturing into deeper and darker sounds of the underground side of electronic music. Techno and tech house both had a strong presence at the festival as Carl Cox and Friends took over the Tripolee stage on Thursday, while Claude VonStroke closed the same stage on Saturday night. Going into these sets I was curious as to how the underground would play out in the Electric Forest setting. Prior to this festival, the only Carl Cox experience I had was in the Ultra Mega structure, a large but rather intimate tent that Cox himself helped create. Electric Forest doesn’t have a mega structure, and to be particular, the Tripolee stage is set in a wide open field so my feelings before the sets were that of uncertainty – how wonderfully wrong I was though. While the atmosphere at Tripolee was not the same of that of an enclosed tent, it brought a unique and singular vibe all in its own. It goes without saying that dancing to the crisp sounds of Carl Cox and rump-shaking grooves of Claude VonStroke on an open ranch at 3am in the morning is an experience that is unparalleled and un-replicable.

DJ-Instrumental Crossover Sets
We are currently in a state where some DJ sets simply don’t cut it anymore. As a budding producer, you need to be able to stand out in your performances. This ideology was more prevalent than ever at this year’s Electric Forest with these crossover sets being showcased throughout. Artists like Odesza, Autograf, Lindsey Stirling, Goldroom, Goldfish and Slow Magic refreshingly showed that not all electronic music has to be played through the decks.

Bassnectar
To put it simply, at Electric Forest Bassnectar to the electronic music fans is what The String Cheese Incident is to the jam band hippies. Having not played at the festival since 2012, Bassnectar’s set truly did feel, as many other blogs and people will say, like a homecoming. Lorin didn’t just play any old set; he truly responded to the crowd and played for them. Starting off slow, Nectar progressively built his set to engage the listener and lock them into the vibe. What he did was masterful, catering his set to the Forest, for the Forest, dropping deep and dark bass rather than the high-energy bangers everybody knew, and it was because of this that his set was truly something special.

The People
One of the greatest parts of Electric Forest happens to be the people who make their way out there. When you cross the hippies that the jam bands bring and the PLUR folks that the electronic music scene can offer, the result is a crowd of immense mutual respect and love for each other. At many times in our everyday life it seems as though people relieve stress and let off steam through some form of aggression such as going to the gym. However, at the Forest it’s almost the complete opposite. People come here and relieve their stress by forcing positivity into each other. The end result is, well more positivity. Even when things seem grim, it’s impossible to go through a day at the Forest without eventually giving into all the goodness around you. How do I know? Well losing your bag with your only car keys in them might make your mood turn a little sour, but the positive energy in the Forest won’t let you go without turning that frown upside down.

Sherwood Forest
Where the magic happens. If you haven’t been here yet, you’ll never know so just go.

LOWS

Traffic
As much as I loved this festival, the traffic getting into the campgrounds is an issue that needs to be seriously addressed. Being honest, it was atrocious and, for a major event company like Insomniac and Madison House Presents, pretty unacceptable. Many attendees like myself entering from the south entrance of the festival had to wait upwards of 4 hours+ to get into the campgrounds. While yes, in comparison to the entirety of the whole festival, the 4 hours may seem miniscule, to the people who had to wait even longer of upwards to 8 hours, it was an entire day that was paid for, nearly gone. To describe the issue from the south side entrance let’s take a look this diagram I took 30 minutes to draw up on paint:

As you can see, once past the security check points, each car was forced to funnel into two lanes that would lead into the campgrounds. If you were on the far ends of the checkpoints, moving into the grounds were easy. However, if you were in one of the middle checkpoints, moving in was difficult because everyone was forced to try and funnel into the two lanes themselves without anyone to direct the traffic. That’s a lie, there were people there to direct traffic however the problem came in that those people were all volunteers that were, at the end of the day, confused, discombobulated and unprepared for the situation. As one of my friends so eloquently put it “You can’t just have the kid who’s working part time at Zumiez start conducting traffic for 40,000 people.”

DanceSafe Shut Down
Read this article first for a little context. No matter what festival you’re at, ultimately some people are going to be taking drugs. And if we’re really being brutally honest here, Electric Forest is definitely no exception. Between the candy-flipping, hippie-flipping, Jedi-flipping and more, drugs are kind of a thing in the woods of Sherwood, whether you like it or not. Organizations like DanceSafe are ultimately there to help festival attendees with safety and harm reduction. While I can understand how giving out straws, condoms, test kits and more may seem to promote the use of drugs, it really is only facilitating the safer use of what is going to happen anyway. Although the festival has released an official statement as to why they shut DanceSafe down, their answer really does not add up and in all fairness, the people, along with DanceSafe, deserve more.

Trash and Litter
One of the overarching ethos of Electric Forest has always been to be green, to clean up after yourself and throw away your own garbage. It seems as though some people didn’t get that message though. With Electric Forest bringing in a horde of new people this year (45,000 in attendance compared to last year’s 35,000), it seems as though some of the new guys didn’t get the memo. The Double JJ Ranch isn’t some raceway or parking lot to just throw away your empty water bottles and trash in; it’s a working ecosystem with living creatures. To litter and not care about the venue is to disrespect the very place that just brought so much value into your life. Treat it with respect and pick up your trash.

Overall, this year’s Electric Forest was a huge success even with the minor hiccups along the way. Between the stellar lineup, new stages, plug-in programs, art instillations and more, Electric Forest continues to prove itself as one of the truly unique and singular festivals in the world. As a friend of mine once told me, first timers go for the music, but return for the Forest experience, and that statement couldn’t be truer. It’s Electric Forest’s ability to act as a music festival – transformational festival hybrid that makes it stand out from the rest, introducing newcomers to an unknown world where spirituality and music come together.

The post The Land of Make Believe: Highs and Lows From Electric Forest 2015 appeared first on EDMTunes.

We are only a day away from this year’s Electric Forest and we here at EDMTunes couldn’t be more excited. While many festival goers across the country are recovering from the madness that ensued at EDC this past weekend, Foresters far and wide are anxiously waiting for their time to come. If you’re a festival veteran, you most likely have your entire Electric Forest experience scheduled and planned out. But if you’re an Electric Forest veteran, you know that having a plan is almost pointless, and are going to go wherever the Forest ends up taking you. While having a plan may be considered a little taboo, being aware of certain acts to look out for isn’t. After all, this is still a music festival showcasing some of the brightest talents out in the game. That is why we have compiled a list of 10 artists to stumble upon at this year’s festival. We say stumble upon because these aren’t the normal headliners that would come to mind. There is no Skrillex, Cox, Flume, Kaskade, Claude, Bassnectar or the like, simply because those acts do not need explaining. This list is for those acts you may have never heard and should simply be aware of.

Goldroom
Josh Legg, aka Goldroom, is all about those west coast vibes and jams. This guy was making beach music before tropical house was even a thing. Goldroom just dropped his third EP, It’s Like You Never Went Away, which features some revamped versions of his old songs – so you know his set is going to be fresh. If you’re looking for good music, good times, and good vibes to be grooving to, Goldroom will be where it’s at. While his DJ set in the Forest will without a doubt be a jam, the real treat is going to lie in his live set at the Sherwood Court.

Goldfish
If you’re into sassy saxophones and groovy bass-lines, Goldfish is the band for you. Hailing from Cape Town, South Africa, Dominic Peters and David Poole fuse elements from jazz and African music all while playing a plethora of live instruments including saxophones, flutes, keyboards and double bass. Not only are Goldfish’s sets live, but they are composed entirely of original material. You can catch Goldfish twice on Sunday at the Tripolee stage and Forest Stage.

Alison Wonderland
The Aussies are officially taking over the world, and Alison Wonderland is part of the group that is leading the charge. Only a few months ago did Wonderland release her debut album, Run, following it up with a national tour across Australia, playing a series of warehouse shows, which from what we’ve heard have been nothing short of legendary. The Aussie’s hip-hop and trap influenced style truly makes for a set that will be fully of energy that you won’t want to miss, so you know that on Sunday at 5pm, Tripolee will be the place to be.

SNBRN
Los Angeles based producer has slowly been taking over the scene with his signature sound of what he calls ‘sunset house.’ His debut original, ‘Raindrops’, featuring vocalist, Kerli, was received to much acclaim and has amassed over 2 million plays on SoundCloud within its first 5 months. As tropical house begins to subside a bit, it is SNBRN’s unique fusion of deep and future house that begins to take over. Fortunately, SNBRN will be playing three times throughout the Forest, but nothing seems more appropriate than his 8pm Saturday slot at Tripolee, when the sun will surely be setting over the Double JJ Ranch.

Lindsey Stirling
Okay so Lindsey Stirling isn’t exactly an unknown artist and in fact has a very dedicated and strong fan base, but I’m putting her on this list cause not every “EDM” fan knows who she is. To put it simply, she plays the violin to an assortment of genres including hip-hop, classical, and of course electronic… all while dancing as well. Performers like Stirling are a rarity to come by so you best be at the Jubilee Stage come Saturday.

Lido
Lido is another cutting edge artist who has made an immersive live show his priority. The talented young Norwegian is known for his performances that include his own vocals, drums and keyboard. His production is also incredible, as evidenced by his recent collaborative EP with Canblaster, ‘Superspeed.’ It seems as if Lido has begun to hit the mainstream as well, based on his two recent tracks with Chance The Rapper, ‘Planes’ and ‘Heaven Only Knows.’ Nevertheless, Lido has never forgotten his roots and maintains his joyful future bass style.

Illenium
As an upcoming Electric Forest rookie, I remember looking longingly at last year’s lineup and dreaming about Seven Lions’ set. While Jeff Montalvo will not be attending this year, the rapidly rising Nick Miller will be. The Denver based producer makes some of the finest melodic dubstep, as evidenced by his constant stream of impressive remixes. His collaborations with artists like Sound Remedy and Said The Sky highlight his position as one of the top producers of euphoric bass.

Mr. Carmack
Mr. Carmack is incredibly multi-talented, a man who seems to have played every instrument from the French horn to the ukulele. His immense musical abilities and remarkably extensive catalogue makes him an absolute legend in the electronic music community. While he has many notable achievements, such as twice hitting the #1 spot on Bandcamp, he has never comprised his integrity. He remains unsigned and produces an eclectic array of music that simply fulfills his passion.

The post 10 Acts To Stumble Upon At Electric Forest appeared first on EDMTunes.