DAY 1 RECAP
We will start this review out by saying that we got rained on about 30+% of this day. It poured. It drizzled. It turned the grounds from a dry, pretty field, to the possible scary runoff of portapotties, beer cans, and vomit. The poor kids that didn’t check the weather or had never been to this venue were immediately regretting their non-waterproof eyeliner and cute sandals from Urban Outfitters. We chose to be assholes and make fun of the situation by bringing a floating ring, which someone from the DOD crew wore proudly at all times. Plus, you can never be too prepared in case of a flash flood.
Our day started with Zed’s Dead at the gigantic Mars stage. We and about 2,000 other festival-goers gathered around to watch Zachary ‘Hooks’ Rapp-Rovan drop some tracks. We aren’t particularly sure if DC was around, because there was no way that we could see over the tall folks in the crowd, and when we eventually hung back a bit, we only saw Hooks. We were greatly amused by the remix of Europe’s “Final Countdown” and that he dropped Salt-N-Pepa’s “Push It,” along with some Dead Prez, but otherwise this was a good, but fairly unremarkable set. What WAS remarkable was the smoke clouds of the cheapest weed possible, courtesy of the hoards of high schoolers present.
After a brief interlude at the amazing Gogol Bordello “Start Wearing Purple,” we hopped over to see the amazing Matt and Kim. It was awesome to see two people put on such an energetic show despite taking up such real estate on stage. They had energy that was infectious, beats that were catchy, and enough fans in the crowd to warrant a proper sing-along for most of the show.
As is with most festivals, we were dragged away before the end to go check out something else. We grabbed an adult beverage, and walked over to Jamie XX. We’d never seen him before, but his set was SO GOOD that we made it a point to see him the following weekend. Tired of the drops, we walked up to a set of beautiful, dark techno. We were elated, and ran into the crowd to dance. As we got closer, we noticed that he was actually spinning RECORDS. He pulled a record out of the sleeve, flipped it, and continued. We didn’t see much after that, as we were simply dancing with our eyes closed or enjoying the symbiosis of the crowd. Eventually, he slowed it down to drop “Loud Places” and immediately afterward started spinning straight disco. What a cool set!
DAY 2 RECAP
On entry, the guards at the door were confiscating people’s sunscreen (because that totally makes sense in a festival in June in Houston), and almost didn’t let us take in our floatie ring (“What about our safety, HMM??”). Since some of the DOD crew are night owls that crisp in the sun, we might have tucked our sunscreen under our hydration pack on entry (HMMPH). We were smart that day and wore rain boots, which was the best idea ever, as we were able to trudge over any nastiness in our path.
We hopped over to the Mars stage to start our day with Big Gigantic. They opened up with “I Need a Dollar,” as they proceeded to draw passers by into the crowd. With the powerful and talented duo of Dominic Lalli on sax and Jeremy Salken on drums, they played a high energy set that included their tracks, as well as tracks from Zhu, House of Pain, and Macklemore and Ryan Lewis. They did drop a new, unnamed track that despite being “brand new” they already had an intense visual show accompanying it. In fact, their entire show had pretty amazing visuals, including psychedelic cats and Dr. Who. It was like the internet took a handful of mushrooms and proceeded to dance happily all over the screen.
Shortly after we finished watching part of Against Me!, torrential downpour decided to rain on our parade. We were told via loudspeaker that we needed to evacuate, and we did. Since we parked extremely close, we dried off in our car for a moment before the rain started to let up and we heard cheering. Assuming everything was back open, we just headed back into the festival, where we were greeted with the evacuation notice and thousands of people that had apparently refused to leave or stormed back in once the rain let up a bit. Since there was only the mildest of drizzle at this point, we stood around for a moment and contemplated what to do. After a few minutes, the announcement turned off and the fest was back on (confirmed by a miraculous Twitter update that we actually received)! Unfortunately, this pushed everyone back an hour. We grabbed some nachos and a beer, and headed off to catch 3lau.
3lau had a tiny hiccup in the beginning – the sound cut out for 2 minutes and he restarted his set. No worries! We had a great time, despite being “Sandstormed” and smacking us with “Levels.” This was fun, trollish delight to be had by all, topped off by the fact that we ended up dancing by a sexy power ranger doing his or her best impression of the robot. The whole set was a sing along, from Alice Deejay’s “Better off Alone” and Lil Jon & The Eastside Boyz’ “Get Low,” people sang every lyric at the top of their lungs. Sexy Power Ranger robot-ed in glee as well.
Next up was the Chainsmokers, whom we only got a brief glimpse of. However, as they took the stage with an incredibly epic intro, there were people screaming and running to the area. Heck yea! We stayed past “Me Myself and I” and then headed off to line up for Deadmau5.
We showed for Deadmau5 about 40 minutes early so we could get a good spot – all the folks we knew were waiting for him over an hour ahead of time. We honestly thought we were pushing it, but after 10 minutes, the Mau5 showed up early. We would love to give you more on his set, but we were too busy dancing, and we totally forgot to write notes. However, we were certain he played his big hits, such as “Ghosts and Stuff,” “Some Chords,” and more, and was accompanied by a mindblowing visual show of his namesake icon, and a bit of torrential downpour. At one point, towards the end of his set, he said “You can’t be a real DJ until you tell people to put your hands in the air,” shortly followed by a overhyped command to put our hands up. TEEHEE, OH YOU.
We were pretty stoked with this year’s electronic lineup, which has steadily grown over the years. We seriously can’t wait to see what FPSF does next.
Journalist/blogger since 2009 and music lover since 1980. Bex now travels the world and writes and takes photos of dance events, creates art in various media, sings quietly to her cat in the shower, and occasionally builds something that tends to involve a blowtorch. She can usually be seen hiding behind some sort of camera rig.
