After LSR/City at San Jose Civic, we went to the after party at the Ritz, it had been almost 20 years since I went to that club, fun to be back. Took forever to get in, but we got in just in time for Gareth's 1h30 set:
It had been 4 years since Gareth Emery came for the the last Laserface in SF (now LSR/City), and after the somewhat disappointing LSR/City in Vegas (Gareth was great, the lasers were underwhelming), it was great to see a real setup again.
To be entirely honest, the laser setup in SF in 2018 was actually a bit better, but the one in San Jose was also very good and quite enjoyable. The main downside was lack of lighting on stage so literally couldn't see Annebel on stage, just an outline:
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:
I don't want to sound like a fanboy, but hot damn, Dreamstate is genuinely getting better every year, and last years didn't suck!
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:
I got a good shot from the plane, nice to see from high up, Vision on the left, Void in the middle, Sequence on the right by the entrance, and Vision adjacent to the oval racetrack:
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
The People
Dreamstate is the biggest Trancefamily Reunion, so many friends, and I didn't even get to see them all, but it was great to see the ones I did, and it was even more fun with two of my friends:
ready to go out
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 ;)
Day #1
So, let's start with Day #1, we almost managed to get there when it opened, not bad given the travel and hotel issues:
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 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:
Day #2
After minimal sleep from day #1, we didn't quite make opening time for #2, but just in time to see Rinaly just before her set at Vision:
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:
Right after going to Shoreline for Odesza, I had enough time to go home, change, and head out to Pure for Haliene. Such a treat, and so close to home. Glad I didn't miss it.
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:
Ok, I have to admit that I didn't know Odesza, but after a couple of recommendations, I went to chck it out with a friend, and it was quite a nice show. Interestingly it was actually the first sit down show I had seen at shoreline even though I work across the street :)
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
Well, this was a treat, not just infected mushroom, but a 1.5 hour live set with band and all, followed by a DJ psytrance set from 01:00 to 02:00.
Really good joint Dreamstate/Opel Production show, thanks Syd Gris and Ulrich.
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:
My plans for getting the F488 challenge for the day, didn't work out, car failed pre-track inspection and wasn't safe to drive. Getting the logistics down to include my 2 guests, was a bit tricky given that my backup car, the 650S, only has one seat, but we made it work with 2 cars and it worked out.
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:
One night, 3 parties, woohoo!
We started with a Halloween TFSF Party at Jonny Atom's place, very nice party:
We got ourselves a new Paris Hilton :)
And if Paris Hilton can do it, so can I :) This was extra fun because in all these years, I had acually never used any DJ equipment. I know by osmosis the general concepts though, so by just looking at the decks and playing with buttons, I was able to link them so that the 2nd deck could read from the USB stick in the first deck.
From there, I was able to select tracks and start playing. I'm sure my transitions were not the best ones in DJ history, haha, and I managed to get enough things working that I was able to DJ and transition from track to track. Autosync helped of course :)
DJ ledtrancesurgeon in the house :)
We then went to Temple in SF and arrived just before it opened, which was good because the line became huge before long. Saturday was a very busy night for all the clubs. Nice club, it was still filling up when I arrived, but cool to have a look:
social media queen hard at work ;)
From there, I went back to my car and headed over to Audio 10mn away, as I wanted to attend Dave Dresden's OTC party at Audio. Dave gave us a musical journey across genres to a room that got packed before long:
unexpected ran into Natasha whom I hadn't seen in quite a while, what are the odds?
Eric and radiant Karin Bash (check out the eye colors)
my other friends were all over SF, parties everywhere. Alvin made it though
Dave went on his 4H journey that we all got to enjoy until 02:00:
Here is a pretty good video summary of some of his tracks:
And before long, it was time to leave and go to respective after parties. Mine didn't suck :)
