Oh well, we still got there in time for Gareth, 3rd time seeing him in 48h, a record :)
and we finally got him with his picture :)
Of course, ran into friends as always:
Then came time for Above and Beyond:
push the button is back!
and got lucky to get this picture :)
Let's have another gratitude mix for the road :)
It ended way too early (22:30), but given the 2H drive home, it wasn't terrible I guess. Fun was had, rest of the weekend was spent to sleep :)
Video:
But back to the show, it was the best laser show I had seen in the last 4 years, and a great set from Gareth, lots of fun
We were hoping to get balloons in, but they were not allowed :(
Glad to see friends again:
After the openers, it was time for the main show:
Gareth played guitar for us
Nice setup to run all this, could even see the track that was about to be played:
And then Gareth took us on a musical journey, that included psytrance and dubstep, along with lasers :)
Here's the video of the whole show. The recording isn't as good as the professional recording will be, but it should still be good:
After a very nice show, it was over, until the afterparty at Ritz (except for the stupid 1H line to get in, sigh...):
Thank you Gareth, Annabel, and all the tech guys who do the laser magic, for the great show.
It was so much more fun to go with friends and I also made a few extra displays for my outfit:
and I found my Dreamstate girlfriends again, so happy :)
What was new this year was the after party from 02:00 to 06:00 which was a great last minute addition for anyone who didn't have a long drive home. Also, it was good not to have 3 conflicts every hour, because damn, that was the rest of dreamstate for me, I really wanted to be at 3 stages almost every hour. I wouldn't be mad if DS switched to 3 days with 3 stages instead of 2 days with 4 :)
The lineup was solid like I said:
Pictures libraries:
The lights and decors were awesome as always:
The stages were as follows:
The dream
The sequence
The void got bigger and nicer this year
And Vision was indoors as usual, nice but the stage was badly lit
so great to run into my DS Harbor friend Emily
she was so sweet and made an custom tranceledguy kandi
and it's not a party without Afik and his crew :)
Danielle from TFLA
Trancefamily SF, represent!
Ran into copycats, haha
I thought that was funny :)
I'm easily amused ;)
arrived in time to see my friend Khromata for more great psytrance
Hana and her angelic singing was great to see again
Then we had the Trancefamily Meetup Pictures:
And back for Elysian to see Emma Hewitt and ilan Bluestone:
It was great to be able to meet them both:
Ben Nicky also had a very enjoyable set
But it was time for some psytrance triplets, stopping by Ms Monique on the way:
Up to Liquid Soul for some lovely psytrance:
so much fun to meet Liquid Soul again
Then Astrix was next, for more technical psytrance, focussed as always:
Back to Dream for PvD:
And then ending with a Aly & Fila b2b John O Callaghan:
stage lighting was minimal unfortunately
Short Video Summary:
Then was time to see Ruben de Ronde:
pretty full by then already
But yes, I wanted some more psytrance, so we went to see Whiteno1se:
And while there, it was great to hang out with some of my favorite psytrance DJs:
3rd time is a charm, Blastoyz finally looks like his picture :)
and Reality Test
Then back to Dream for ATB and then Audien:
And then Armin. I was hoping he'd finally play a classic trance set, given that it was, you know, dreamstate, but he played some mainstage set again, that was disappointing. The set wasn't bad per se, but a poor choice for dreamstate in my opinion:
Abraxis was last, hard to get pictures with no proper lighting on stage:
and just like this, it was 02:00, the main show was over
But not the afterparty in Vision, 4 more hours to go:
Craig Connelly and FactorB finished the set with some pure trance joy
It's not a good party if the sun hasn't risen when it's over :)
And just like that, the 2 days, 26H of trance, were over. I cannot give enough thanks to insomniac, all the artists and everyone who brought in outfits, smiles, and good vibes.
Video summary of Day #2:
Haliene did a wonderful performance, with so much love and energy. I was delighted to get front row to that show.
Glad to run into Robert again, he must have a season pass at Pure :)
The video is unfortunately of poor sound quality, because, well, the sound at Pure was bad. The music was too loud and Haliene's voice was had to hear:
But I got to meet her at the end and get a great picture with her:
For a change, I tried to not take my cameras and just use my Pixel7 Pro. Given the distance, using a 5X zoom from a distance on a cell phone with a small sensor, was not going to be great, but the phone did not as poorly as I expected. It didn't match my real cameras of course, but did ok-ish.
A few pictures below, oh yes and the show as actually quite good. Interesting music (melodic dubstep and other genres), and great visuals:
Good show, and got out just in time to go home, change, and go see Haliene at Pure
Great to see the TFSF crew again, and the usual suspects, plus other random fun pictures with people
Anna, our TFSF embassadress, mingling with the crowds
She even made kandi for the band
The show included 2 opening DJs:
And to our surprise, infected mushroom brought an entire band, I had a couple of outfits ready of course :)
Then, the band took over, it wsa a great show packed with energy:
For the last hour, they switched to playing a psytrance DJ set, which was quite enjoyable too:
It definitely was a great night, definitely an enjoyable show, especially with the unexpected live piece. Thank you.
Video summary:
Got there bright and early:
Arrived just in time for the drivers meeting:
thankfully my car was track ready and worked well
Lots of nice cars, the lambo group had 2 rungroups with few cars, so that was plenty of track time (almost 4H) instead of the more limited 2H it would have been otherwise:
Hi Justice, long time no see
There were 2 other rungroups with various cars:
One nice thing we did was a couple of parade laps with the lambos:
About my driving, mmmh, it had been a long time since I last went and I had to re-learn the track a bit. I started around 2:01 and got down to 1:57, which isn't terrible, but my best time some previous day, was 1:55, probably with slightly better tires and more skill. I could have gone faster in 10 and 11, but my survival instinct told me not to go faster into those turns with walls at the end :)
Videos of the last and fastest session: