by Showtrotta

Electric Zoo (more by Zach Dilgard)

While from the outside, Electric Zoo (Sept 5-6, 2009) might seem like a 2-day hell, overrun by fake-tanned, heavily hair-gelled masses and their female counterparts, the actual experience (at least for me) was far from it. While my jaw dropped in horror as many of the element described above boarded the ferry to Randall's Island at the 35th Street pier, and I was only further freaked out when the entire boat broke out in a sing-along to "Now That the Love Is Gone" by David Guetta (one of many deejays playing the festival), once I arrived the dread of dealing that all day, subsided.

For starters, the festival grounds were very accommodating size-wise for the number in attendance. When I first arrived around 12:30 on Saturday, there was ample room and even as the day wore on and the grounds filled up, I never felt that I was trudging through a crowd to get where I wanted to go. Along with the size of the venue, the diverse spread of deejays (who were grouped at four different tents/stages vaguely according to similar genre/sound), kept my interaction with club-goers whom I would rarely run into under normal circumstances, to a minimum. In the instances where I was confronted with people straight out of My New Haircut (NSFW!) I couldn't say a bad thing about them. Everyone at the festival seemed to be too happy to be there, and dancing their asses off, to care what was going on around them, or to do anything too outwardly annoying to ruin anyone's time.

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Continue reading "the 2009 Electric Zoo Festival in review"

photos by Zach Dilgard

Frankie Knuckles / actual members of the crowd

"This past labor day weekend in NYC, thousands of dance and electronica music fans gathered together for the first, and hopefully annual Electric Zoo Festival on Randall's Island to celebrate Electronic Music. The festival lineup featured over 50 acts which included Steve Aoki, Busy P, Danny Tenaglia, Benny Benassi, Deadmau5, David Guetta, Markus Schulz, Tom Middleton, Kaskade, and Armin Van Burren over the course of two days....

...On the second day of the festival, house music icon DJ Frankie Knuckles alongside Andy Butler (Hercules & Love Affair) blessed the turntables with a raw and authentic classic house music set that made you feel nothing short of spiritual...

..."Music belongs to everybody," Frankie says after stepping off stage from his Electric Zoo DJ set. "Believe me, If I had the ability I would really just make it possible so that any and everybody could just show up (on the dancefloor)...a lot of times that's all you got to hold onto." To that end, it seems rather fitting that his biggest commercial hit was the ethereal and optimistic Whistle Song, which just might make him the pied piper of dance music who tries to leads the masses to a state of bliss.

Dropping next month is Frankie's Motivation Too album, which is his first compilation in six years. When asked about his own personal tactics for motivation, Frankie notes: "I normally get up early in the morning, like seven or eight o'clock. Musically I'm listening to things that are very spiritual and classical while I'm moving through the morning and getting myself together. I pretty much block out a lot of things that could possibly feed me any kind of negative energy, because my day has to be right...I figure why not get up on the right side of the bed and focus and maybe I'll get through the day and it will be alright."" [MC2D Magazine]

You saw Ryan's pictures from Sunday. More of Zach's pictures from both days of the fest (where he unfortunately missed Lindstrom, James Murphy, Al Doyle, Pat Mahoney, Busy P, DJ Medhi, Junior Boys, Holy Ghost, JDH, Dave P, Andy Butler, and others) (but did capture lots of scariness), below...

Continue reading "Electric Zoo Festival 2009 @ Randalls Island, NYC (more pics)"