One of the things I was looking for this year at Burning Man was a new Trance Night on BAAAHS art car, with special guests Dave Dresden and POS.
In Burning Man fashion, despite times and location to find the art car, the location address I had was wrong, so we didn't find it for a while but I eventually spotted it driving across the playa while Parzival was playing. Better than last year :)
you can't beat the view
After Alvin, POS took over and did a great 2H set, which I can't post, but I'm told it should end up on soundcloud eventually:
Dave Dresden came next, here is his set (check out the drone show visible starting at 1:02:00):
And Aphexcs closed the night, up to a massive wind storm just before sunrise that barely happened because of weather:
weather started to kick up wind
we stayed with Afik the whole night until the art car had to move
did I mention storm and wind? :)
He's a different POV with short clips of the night (check out the wind storm starting at 05:30):
It was definitely a special night, even more special that it was the last night before the rain storms that ruined the next 2.5 days. Glad to have been there and thanks to all the DJs who played for us.
It was great to be able to attend my 3rd Illuminaughty LED Meetup, a great way to see other cool LED stuff built by like minded LED maker geeks. Several had really cool LED builds I had never seen and looked very well done, happy I got to see them :)
Just like last year, Illuminaughty was about as far across the playa as a camp can be, so it was nice when we arrived :)
Ran into a bunch of people will cool gear:
Very cool hat:
Impressed that the newer panels can bend pretty well
i21*
a lot of work went into these patterns
Anthony had a lot of cool gear he built, I was very impressed:
Obligatory group picture:
Thank you to Chuck for organizing this year again, it was lots of fun.
Flying to BM this year was a bit tricky since the plane I've been renting in past years, was not available and no other planes were available. I ended up finding Juan who was interested in flying to BM, as well as potentially attending in the future.
The Comanche is an interesting retract plane. It doesn't have as much power as a C182, but being retract it's fairly fast, and had decent payload. It is a bit challenging to fly though, given that its controls are not what most pilots are used to, including a hand brake instead of foot brake. That was not an issue for Juan though :)
pyramid lake
Arrived at BM before long, not a huge line of cars, which was unexpected:
ticket chek and vehicle check
We did 2 circles around the city with pictures:
center camp
the bee man
temple
gas station for art cars and official vehicles
edge of 10 & K
line of art cars getting their DMV credentials
Shots of the Airport:
flying around razorback before joining downwind
nice control tower
great to see my friends at the airport, and thanks for helping run the show
The departure was tricky since most of burning man was delayed by 2 days due to the big rain storm. Runway opened monday, but too late for my friend to come and fly back that same day, so we left on tuesday, after the delayed burn. Seeing the cars drive out was interesting, there were 2 paths across a somewhat wet spot that was left over a river that got created and blocked off the road:
this was the literally river that was blocking the road but by monday, had dried off enough by the exit point
The city itself was a bit sparse by tuesday, understandably:
temple was still there and meant to burn tuesday night
Like the previous years, it was a lot of work to process/fix/sort all the pictures and write this summary report (Around 3200 pictures, trimmed down to 2124, and 534 selected as the better ones sorted in different categories, 237 are in this page because I'm not good at picking :) ). All pictures are geotagged, so you can click on them to see where they were.
As a way to say thanks if you enjoy the report, share it with your fellow burners, or friends who might be interested in burning man.
If you'd like to see reports from previous years, you can go to my main BM page, and especially if you don't know burning man, you should read my 2002 page which has more of an introduction.
If you'd like to use my pictures in a commercial setting, drop me a line to discuss and I can give you full resolution pictures (marc<at>merlins.org).
If you'd like to say thanks with cash, please donate money to one of the many camps and art installations that are often out of pocket after burning man. If you don't know which one, please donate to Opulent Temple: https://www.opulenttemple.org
Summary:
This year was weird with the unexpected rain that shut most everything down for almost 2.5 days. I also didn't try to be out so many hours every day, and with the missing days, I barely biked 100 miles and sure didn't cover all the streets, and missed a fair amount of camps during the day. Oh well....
Also, thanks to Speed Raver for this professional shot:
So, let's get to it, the pictures by categories:
Black Rock City
Easy and unevenful flight:
got 2 rides from the newer bus/shuttle system from the airport to close to camp
Flight pictures here.
Another year, another Burning Man with its infrastructure:
Center Camp:
it's a good place to go look for your lost keys
or your lost water bottles, or anything else
Like each year, thanks to our lamp lighters. Of course, by the end of the week with all the mud and rain, the streets got a bit darker...
The Location Related Rain Problem: Weather and Rain
No major duststorms this year, but yeah, we had his little rain problem instead. I've stopped being a fan of the burning man location and the playa dust, a long time ago, but also pointed out almost 20 year ago that the location felt between very suboptimal and stupid to me, I mean, a lakebed that still gets flooded most years, what could possibly go wrong? (the alkaline playa dust that messes up all your stuff, and destroys electronics, is just a bonus). So yes, I love BM, no I really don't like the location. Obviously this year after 2 days of fairly heavy rain on and off, it really became a problem.
Many burners shrugged it off as part of the experience, but I was personally quite disappointed about all the events and work that were cancelled as a result.
Anyway, for me burning man mostly ended thurday night/friday morning a bit after sunrise, which wasn't much of a sunrise:
by then the wind was already quite high from the pressure front coming in.
While getting some sleep to recover from the night, rain started, and wind ripped out a fair amount of things. Thankfully the anti-sun tarp I had was damaged but helped deflect the rain from the tent that wasn't very water proof:
we will rebuild! :)
Before long, the playa started becoming a swimming pool. It looks cool and all, but walking out was bad because it tore up the playa surface, making it terrible for biking/driving later, and it was sooo sticky that you ended up having pounds of playa attached to each foot if you tried to walk anywhere:
people quickly figured out walking with ziplock bags and duct tape was the way to go, not fun though
sure it was pretty :)
Unfortunately it rained on and off for 2 days, so it took forever to dry, and when it did finally dry enough, the few people who drove against recommendations, tore up the playa surface making it unbikable in many places:
a few took advantage to have a bit of fun :)
Weather always makes for nice pictures, but the cost was a bit high this year:
Since we were mostly stuck (shelter in place order/strong recommendation to preven futher messing up the playa surface), I used some of that time to make and publish a few videos, some were used by news outlets:
It was defininitely unexpected that the News Media worried about us so much when the exit road was closed 2 days due a small river crossing the path and deep mud, while most people weren't trying to get out and had plenty of food and water. I even had a TV station in Australia that wanted to do a "live" report from BM (a moronic idea, I told them that live was pointless and asking for wifi to fail, which of course it did).
Kudos from Jaewon Jung from KNTV who did a much better job: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwywUTudtLw
The reality, which I explained in soe of the video clips above, is that we were inconvienced for sure, lots of things were cancelled, some art was damaged, and it kind of sucked for many of us to be kind of suck within a short radius instead of being able to enjoy BM and have fun. The hardcore survivalists probably had a great time :) but for me it was disappointing to lose almost 3 days of BM, even if indeed were were totally fine the entire time.
Now, had this rain happened on sunday/monday/tuesday instead, it would have caused more problems because now it really would have stopped people from geting out (very few people want to get out on friday or saturday), and probably a few people would have fun low on food. Running low on water was never really going to be a problem, way too many people bring way too much water. I had twice as much as need like each year, not counting the bazillion gallons that my camp, had:
Will BMorg move to another more suitable and safer location? I already asked more than once and the answer is "very unlikely". I'm told they've recently signed a multi year contract with the BLM to stay at this location, and it's true that they and a fair amount of camps have infrastructure and storage nearby, so moving at a radically different location would definitely cost a fair bit. I still think it should be done, but I understand it's not likely to, and that BM attendees will have to be ready for more extreme weather, and continue to deal with dealing and fixing all their gear that is covered and potentially eventually damaged by alkaline playa dust.
Drones
Before the weather turned to shit, going out at night was a lot of fun as always
And two teams of drones (actually I'm told several team banded together) were nice enough to perform drone shows for us comprizing 100 or more drones depending on the show:
Most people don't quite realize the amount of effort involved in bringing that many drones, preflighting them all one, by one, recharging that many batteries between each flight, from power that you had to make/bring yourself to start with. From my understanding, those drones also used unsealed outrunner motors that are more efficient, but likely need to be manually cleaned afterwards to remove the bad playa dust from the coil wires afterwards. That's a *lot* of work, and those teams deserve a huge thank you from all of us.
Camps
This year again, I stayed with the wonderful people at Dustfish, and my tent did ok despite the rain:
roomy enough
I brought an alledged 190W of solar panels, but since they weren't exactly matched and the ratings are always kind of a lie, I got 85W usable out of them in perfect conditoins, which was still useful to recharge my DC battery system:
top meter kept track of how much I used, bottom of how much I produced
Sadly, charging all my LEDs and lights took more Wh than I was able to produce, epsecially once it started raining, so I had to use our camps' grid, which thankfully stayed up thanks to wonderful advance fuel planning.
I probably need to find a way to bring these extra panels next year, but they are mis-matched so they'll need a separate system
thank you to our generators
we also had showers with real toilets and enough water to survive the week, nicely done!
I didn't have as much time to go out and bike to see all the camps during the day, but I tried:
circle J was awesome to supplement what you migh have been missing
I feel like I didn't get to see as much art this year, maybe there was a little less, and also the rain made things harder, especially for late setup, or refueling generators for night lights when you couldn't bike or drive around. I even unfortunately saw a set of solar panels that were rendered useless when the rain fried the power converters that were attached to them :(
Of course, it gets even nicer at night:
sadly the storm was rough on some of the art
A crowd favorite this year, was Mariposa
This one was fun too:
One special piece of art was Chapel of Babel:
We were lucky to be hosting these planets at dustfish, great way to bike back at night
another thing to climb that was totally quite challenging we totally hoped was safe :)
we had this one too
felt less dangerous to climb, though
On the plus side, once on top, without having died, there were good views:
People
As each year, people pictures:
great to run into friends every year
well done sir!
Hi Karin, we climbed this deathtrap and neither of us died :)
yeah, it got messy around the end, some actually had boots, well done
And yes to LEDs!
Went back to the Billion Bunny March, the only big parade that didn't get cancelled due to rain:
eh, I recognize you
Fire
Plenty of people doing fire dancing this year again, awesome!
The flaming lotus girls were still there:
Before everything went to crap with the rain, got to cach a few smaller burns
sad to see a butterfly in flames :)
Vehicles
these guys brought the perfect vehicle for this year's conditions ;)
Like every year, thanks to all the camps that brought cool arts cars:
and of course, it gets much for fun after sunset:
this cool art car had colors ...
... that were synchronized with the members' vests
well done!
An BAAAHS!
Of course, let's not forget bikes:
mmmh, I see one of those every year, it's very far from its home
And thank you to all the camps that help fix bikes. I had spare tubes and tools, but mine had a non trivial issue with its hub and pedals falling apart that I was able to fix thanks to one of them!
We didn't have that much dust this year, due to rains before the event, and once we got a bunch more rain during the event, dust sure wasn't a problem. Thanks to the water trucks though:
Temple
A new temple this year, another nice design. I didn't stay long enough to see it burn, especially since it was burned Tuesday this year, after most people had left, but here are a few pictures:
every year, a nice guy plays piano which you can hear insie the temple while contemplating the inside
The Man
Last but not least, the man, of course.
The man didn't burn on saturday given the rain, nor did it burn on sunday, but by monday the playa was finally dried up enough to prep for the man burn:
Because things were a bit weird with the unusual schedule, the fire conclave was not allowed to perform as normal within the man perimeter, so a few rebelled and performed right outside at 6 oclock around 20:00, and it was a good show as always:
Then came the man burn, just 2 days late:
Due to time constraints, the art car circle didn't last as long as normal because the Chapel of Babel burned next at midnight, which was a bit early and broke up the art car circle a bit early, a slight bummer. Still, given that it was monday night, that was much more than what I expected, as I thought a lot of people would be gone by then.
thank you to the lovely people who offered food to us
more lovely people who made canadian poutine!
tuesday morning, last view before heading out
Conclusion
The gate was mostly closed from mid friday to mid monday, almost 3 days, due to heavy mud that most cars, except serious offroading ones, would get stuck in. By monday afternoon, one of the 2 runways re-opened, and by tuesday morning, after the burn, it was not that hard to get out. Somehow even the exodus line wasn't as terrible as it usually is.
crossing the 2 finally dried out small rivers that were created by the rain. This is where cars that tried to leave early, got stuck
This was my 13th burn, lucky 13th I guess? :) I was recounting last year that it felt like the toughest weather I had experienced between excessive heat and dust storms, but this year was honestly even worse since the rain cancelled so many events, never mind the damage to equipment that wasn't water proof, or not designed for that much water. Let's not pretend that it's just bad luck, our climate has been changing and the odds are shifting not in our favor the longer we keep going there. It doesn't mean every future year will be that bad, but I'm very afraid the weather will be overall worse and more unpredictible every year, which is very sad.
So yes, I really wish the org would consider new locations, but I'm also not holding my breath about it happening, which is unfortunate because engineers and people who bring all the cool stuff, are unfortunately likely to eventually get tired of the worse and worse weather, and coudl just stop, making burning man less cool over time. I sincerely hope to be wrong, but I think the most likely way that will be true, will be for the org to pick a better location, if BMorg is reading this, please pretty please with cherry on top.
Related to this, this year I didn't bring any LED art piece due to the damage the playa did in past years, and this year again the playa dust got into both my expensive camera lenses, which has to be sent for repair/professional cleaning (I use real cameras because cell phones cannot take pictures nearly as good at night). So yeah, I really don't love the playa dust or general price to pay for that location for those who participate.
I hope you enjoyed this report. Feel free to say thanks to me by simply sharing it with your friends, and see you on the playa in the future (or you'll see me at night with my lights).
We were supposed to have Ms Monique at Public Works, but unfortunately she got sick and had to cancel, so we did our own night with locals. It definitely was a mix of differnet kinds of music, but nice to be out in our local club again.
I had to go fly to retrain currency, I had to go for a flight, so I went with Randy for a bay tour, beautiful weather and views, just enough clouds to make it fun and pretty, but not enough to stop landing in Half Moon Bay:
After SFO, on to SF:
Finishing up with Alcatraz, Golden Gate, and the Coast:
While Cluj is a bit far for me, I liked the festival so much in 2021 and 2022 the festival atmosphere, and the trance lineup were so good these last 2 years, that I was happy to go back one more year.
This year it was easier to go there since I lined up sightseeing on Poland just before flying to Cluj and benefited from the direct flight. Arrived just in time to check in and enjoy the first day.
Always cool to see Untold cars right at the airport:
Grounds
glad to be back
and they were too :)
The fact that it's in a park, you can ride the paddle boats (although it stupidly requires wristband only money):
And amusement stuff for kids:
also, this :)
And more:
One thing that Untold does well is having a lot of performers to help with the atmosphere:
People
Great to see happy trance people this year again, and people who have 3 years have now become friends:
As well as many of my favorite DJs:
So many nice decors to get pictures with:
Day1
Cool to see Galaxy the first day, before it opened. Didn't go back much since it was hard techno, not my favorite
mainstage
Of course, I spent most my time at fortune, the Trance stage
I have a portion of Aname's set here:
A bit of mainstage:
Back to fortune with Ben Gold:
Day2
I came back bright and early on Day 2 to see Exolight and Suncatcher for a wonderful sunset set:
Glad to see kids dancing, new customers for Trance:
Their full set is here:
Went to check other stages too:
Back for Ilan Bluestone:
Full Ilan Bluestone set recorded here:
Key 4050 next:
And another wonderful FactorB vs Craig Connelly B2B:
Entire FactorB vs Craig Connelly B2B set recorded here:
Finishing with Allen Watts:
Full Allen Watts set recorded here:
all the way to sunrise, with all the birds waking up :)
Day3
So, the previous year and the first 2 days of this year, I was able to record entire DJ set by installing my camera on a light pole that was just the right distance from the stage. It all worked well until it was stolen on the 3rd day, including some sets that were on it:
setting up to record Exolight and Suncatcher
switching recordings between DJs
Yes, I was being over optimistic in my camera being safe enough there, some asshole managed to climb there in front of everyone and detach it behind my back without getting caught. Sad, but oh well, it's life. Unfortunately this also means the sets I recorded that day, are gone.
It was great to see Ruben the Ronde again, with a set similar to what he played at ASOT London a month prior. I enjoyed it just as much the 2nd time :)
And then, my pal Faid from Aly and Fila:
I've also become a big fan of Xijaro and Pitch, some really great trance with some pretty epic remixes:
The end of the night as a bit less fun once I realized my camera had been stolen and all my video recordings were gone. Oh well...
Quick Video Summary from Day 3 from bits taken on my cell phone:
Day4
Untold is not for the weak, 4 days, and those days are up to 16 hours :)
unfortunately a bit of rain came by, but it didn't last too long
well, more than just a bit :)
After the rain stop, Daxson came, my first time seeing him, and it was great trance:
Andrew Rayel next:
The WLT, We Love Trance:
From there, it was time to head up to mainstage for David Guetta and Armin:
Unfortunately Armin started very late, and after a 30mn commercial break which was agonizing knowing how little time left I had before having to leave the venue to run to the airport for my 06:00 flight out I so regretted having but couldn't change anymore:
And while Armin was nowhere close to being done, but started way too late, had to run to the airport to barely make the luggage checkin deadline:
it was bittersweet to watch the rest online, but oh well
Quick Video Summary from Day 4 from bits taken on my cell phone:
Should you go? Would I go Back?
Untold is in my opinion one of the better/best festivals in Europe, and even on the world stage, it is worth going to, I have done so 3 years in a row ;) Given the distance from California, I may not go every year due to distance and cost, not even counting time conflicts with some other festivals, but definitely recommend you go check it out.
They put a lot of effort turning this public park in Cluj into festival grounds, and do a very good job with it.
The security staff does a good job with searches being targetted well and plenty of security staff within the event (looked like the entire town's police and gendarmerie)
I'm obviously biased towards trance, which was at the fortune stage like all years. It is run by Bodgan and other trance lovers for trance lovers
Festival has the longest hours I've seen anywhere, from around 16:00 to maybe 08:00 for the last stage. 16H per day for 4 days!
Only a couple of carnival rides, and you need to pay for them, sadly using their fake unreliable wristband money
Yeah, sadly, they do not accept contactless credit cards and still require you to load up money on wristbands, which is a waste of time, long lines in some places, and totally unncessary. Please stop.
Lots of stages, I think it was at least 8 depending on how many of the smaller ones, you count
Mainstage is massive, but unfortunately has a weird layout with things massively blocking the view in the pit if you're not in the front, but if you watch from the back elevated seats, it's a good view, albeit distant
Mainstage fireworks are nice, but nowhere close to what you'd see at something like EDC
Mainstage also had up to 30nn breaks between main DJs, where you would just sit there and they would play commercials. That was honestly lame and they should stop. It was even worse when Armin started almost 30mn later than he could have when he was already scheduled so late in the night.
VIP is mostly worthless unless you're happy to have a side view which isn't as good in my opinion, and it's only useful for mainstage. Unless you like to have your private area with bar, or private tables that cost even more, VIP does not make sense in my opinion
Is it worth flying across the world for? Yes, absolutely. Do it!
Conclusion
Thoughts about this year:
One natural thing when you go back to the same festival every year, is that the Wow factor goes away a little bit compared to the first year, but still, it felt like a magical place and magical moment for those 4 days
The trance lineup was more sparse this year, unfortunately it seems that Untold is deciding whether to still fund Trance as a major genre for Untold, and I've heard unofficial that Untold Dubai may not have any trance stage at all. If so, that would be a pity, especially as many trance fans travel to Untold just because of the stellar trance lineup they've had.
I originally heard about Untold due to a massive 8H set Armin had done before Covid, but by the time I was able to go in 2021 and 2022, Armin didn't come because he was supposed to play in Bucharest instead and that show then got cancelled ;( I was excited this year that he was finally coming back, but became sad when I finally learned that he was going to play the very last timeslot. Flying out of Cluj is not easy, and most flights are between 06:00 and 07:00 on monday morning. Sure enough I had a 06:00 flight that was impossible to change by the time Armin was announced that late, and only got to see about 1H of his set, with a huge rush to the airport afterwards to make it out, what a bummer :(
Still, despite the challenges, less trance this year, and terrible timeslot for Armin, still had a great time. Thanks to all who made the magic happen.
While in Warsaw, some local googlers were nice enough to volunteer their time to give me a tour of the 2 buildings, which was super nice of them.
As expected, modern buildings with a super nice view in the middle of Warsaw, very happy and thankful to have been able to see them.
